Eventos Académicos, 39 ISCHE. Educación y emancipación

Tamaño de fuente: 
The emancipation of the Mendicants Masters in between 1229-1256: a decisive period for the consolidation of the University of Paris
Terezinha Oliveira

Última modificación: 2017-07-16

Resumen


Our aim is to analyze the process of emancipation of the mendicant masters at the University of Paris between the years 1229 to 1256. Since the founding of the University, with the Edict of Parens Scientiarum, only secular masters could be teachers. From the outset, they opposed the entry of mendicant intellectuals, especially Dominicans. In 1229, on a strike of secular masters, mendicants were urged to take up the position of teachers in the 'House'. From then on, disputes escalated, especially as secular masters were, largely, financially and politically disadvantaged. With regard to economic conditions, secular masters depended on the prebendings paid by the students, the Church authorities, and the King to maintain themselves. When the mendicants took up positions of teaching, the former stopped receiving the 'wages'. Moreover, since the mendicant teachers could live on alms, they obtained resources beyond the remuneration of students and authorities. With this, they were in a more favorable situation in the disputes for maintenance of the function of teachers. As far as political conditions were concerned, as mendicants assumed the functions of masters at the University, they became advisors to the king and city authorities, positions that were hitherto occupied by secular masters. In the 1240s, when mendicants won the right to have one more seat of theology, conflict between the two factions increased. In addition to these conditions, it should be noted that the mendicant masters, because they presented themselves as a "novelty", because they had greater access to the texts of Aristotle and because they lived from preaching and alms, began to attract more students than the secular masters. In effect, pupils from the 'four student nations' traveled to Paris to attend the classes of the mendicant masters, an event that contributed even more to stir up the moods of the two groups of teachers. In analyzing these conflicts, we will show that the birth of the University of Paris was marked by this great dispute, in which the mendicant masters struggled to conquer their place of teaching with the secular masters. These disputes assured the Mendicant Orders the emancipation of the condition of preacher friars to university masters and, undoubtedly, they were the ones who promoted the 'great revolution' in the thirteenth-century humanistic knowledge. They influenced, therefore, the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, of which we Latin Americans are heirs culturally. We note that the sources for our reflections will be Letters contained in the Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensi and works of these intellectuals. It should also be noted that our conception of the history of education follows the principles of social history, which conceives man and his actions from the perspective of long duration.