Background
Throughout the Medieval World theology, the official study of religion, was looked upon as the highest and most important form of study. (Spielvogel, 263). The 11th century brought about a big change in the way in which the doctrines of the church were looked upon. Begginning in the 11th century the doctrines of the curch were looked at with reason and logic instead of simple beliefe. This system of analyzing the beliefs of the church within a school setting was referred to as scholasticism. The goal of scholasticism was to intertwine faith and logic. In other words it attempted to prove the doctrines of the curch by using reason and make the doctrines jive with reality.
Abelard
A scholar in France, Peter Abelard did not think that his teachers were smart enough, so he decided to begin teaching in Paris. He had many students because of his sheer ability to draw people in. Because he thought so highly of himself, he often was very headstrong in his arguments with his students. Abelard had a child with a woman named Heloise, but her uncle became mad at him and wanted to get revenge. He also developed people's understanding of philosophy, allowing them to expand their knowledge. He wrote Sic et Non, which showed contradictions withing the church. He was a very hard-thinking man who dove into his work.
The Problem of Universals
Universals began to become issues during the 12th century. Many people struggled with the question of reality itself. There wer 2 differing schools of though that were similar to those of Plato and Aristotle. The realists most similar to Plato thought that our senses lie to us and that the things we sense are just imaginations from God's mind. Everything that we know is put in our minds by God. The nominalists which followed Aristotle thought that individual objects did exist in the form that we see them. There fore, the only way to learn things was to study these objects.
Another problem arose: how Christianity was to fit with the Aristotelian beliefs. He was one of the greatest philosophers, but he did not get his conclusions from any divine ideas, they were all from reason. Some of his ideas actually went against the things which the church taught. One man who made a big attempt to mesh Artistotle's beliefs with those of the church was St. Thomas Aquinas.
Another problem arose: how Christianity was to fit with the Aristotelian beliefs. He was one of the greatest philosophers, but he did not get his conclusions from any divine ideas, they were all from reason. Some of his ideas actually went against the things which the church taught. One man who made a big attempt to mesh Artistotle's beliefs with those of the church was St. Thomas Aquinas.
Aquinas
St. Thomas Aquinas lived from 1225 to 1274 and was a student at Cologne as well as Paris. He also taught in Naples and Paris, and in the city of Paris is where he dove into his work: Summa Theologica. In this work, he would give a question, and then give the different sources which did not agree with the question, and then would insert his own opinions. This great work included about 600 of these questions. Aquinas also thought that truth came from both faith and reason, and that they fit together to form the complete body of truth. Therefore, he derived that the human mind could grasp the truth of this world, but needed God's help in order to understand things of divine nature.