masters of more than regional importance. Chartres, Anjou, Liège, Laon, and Paris all
had their moments of importance at different times in the 11th century, but none
established an institutional tradition of scholastic excellence, and the importance of the
school did not outlast the death or departure of its famous master.
In the early 11th century, the center for French education was the cathedral school of
Chartres under Fulbert. Fulbert’s prestige is attested by the fact that, although many of his
students were evidently drawn from regions near Chartres, others came from as far away
as the Rhineland to study with him. The pattern of students traveling great distances to
study with a distinguished master was not new; but it is harder to state with certainty
where Fulbert’s academic expertise lay. It does not seem to have been in the Trivium; the
mnemonic poems that he left in this area are elementary, and this impression is confirmed
by the fact that Fulbert’s students, most notably Berengar of Tours, neither reveal any
extensive knowledge of Aristotle nor do they often invoke arguments from the Liberal
Arts. But Fulbert’s works and those of his students do reveal a measured and analytical
approach to questions of Christian doctrine, as well as an ability to recognize and
anticipate multiple points of view on contested issues. It was probably, therefore, a
broadly based learning rather than any advanced technical expertise in the Liberal Arts
that drew students to Fulbert’s school at Chartres.
Most of Fulbert’s students returned to their home cathedrals or monasteries after
finishing their studies with him, often themselves becoming masters. But at least two of
Fulbert’s students, Berengar of Tours and Adelman of Liège, followed more complex
careers, serving as schoolmasters at more than one cathedral, and this shift in career
pattern marks a quickening of the intellectual pace of cathedral schools. Not every
cathedral schoolmaster was swept up in the movement; most remained essentially
grammar masters, introducing students to the basics of Latin grammar and literature,
often with an ethical or Christian overlay. But a handful of later 11 1th-century masters
began the exploration of more speculative issues in the Trivium and in Christian doctrine,
and although this movement did not leave monastic schools untouched it was generally in
cathedral schools that these masters found an institutional home. The increasingly
advanced character of the instruction is revealed not just by the sophistication of some of
the theoretical analyses but also by the fact that masters now began to discuss the views
of their contemporaries as well as the ancients. The basic texts (Priscian on grammar;
Cicero on rhetoric; Porphyry, Aristotle, and Boethius on logic) continued to be
expounded, but the glosses and commentaries increasingly took up “questions” where
doctrine was unsettled. Masters could make reputations—and, apparently, fortunes—by
their skill at expounding the standard texts.
During the decades ca. 1100, the two preeminent masters of cathedral schools in
France were William of Champeaux in Paris and Anselm in Laon. William was better
known for his work in the Liberal Arts, Anselm for his commentaries on the Bible; but
neither was as specialized as later masters would be, and both appear to have taught a
wide range of subjects. Students in this period, moreover, frequently traveled themselves,
spending considerable amounts of time with a series of masters. Thus, for example, Peter
Abélard spent time as a student of both William and Anselm before he launched his own
career as a master.
After the 1120s, the cathedral schools gradually lost their role as centers of scholarship
and teaching to the concentration of masters at Paris; students who went to Paris could
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