- Dante, from the anti-papal faction in Florence, was sympathetic to the Averroist
worldview. - It contained stranger combinations yet, such as Fitz-Ralph (188 in Figure 9.6) of
Balliol, who propounded a syncretism of Averroism and Augustinianism. Positions
which had lost ground in the struggle for attention became a grab bag, alliances
of the weak. - This network also ties to non-academic religious reformers such as Thomas More
and Sebastian Franck. A generation back, the network was fed by Italian Humanist
circles; Reuchlin derived his cultural capital from the Florence group, and the
young Colet had corresponded with Ficino (EP, 1967: 2:138). - Popkin (1979: 37–43, 360–361); EP (1967: 5:366–368). Wuthnow (1989: 97–98)
points out that the presence of a local parlement in Bordeaux kept the city
orthodox, since the dominant nobility throughout Europe generally had an interest
in maintaining the traditional status order of Catholicism. In Toulouse, where
Montaigne probably had studied, an insurrection had been put down in 1562, and
hundreds of Protestants were executed. - This is emphasized throughout CHLMP (1982). The creativity of the nominalists
apparently lasted two generations, dissipating by the late 1300s. It is possible that
later advances occurred but have been ignored by historians, since this period of
late scholasticism has not been much studied. In any case, this obliviousness to
nominalist innovation started very early, with its contemporaries. - The sheer complexity of argument tended to bury it. The works of Dullaert of
Ghent (315 in the key to Figure 9.7), at Paris in the early 1500s, “summarize in
great detail (and usually with hopelessly involved logical argument) the teachings
of Oxford ‘calculatores’ such as Thomas Bradwardine, William Heytesbury, and
Richard Swineshead; of Paris ‘terminists’ such as Jean Buridan, Albert of Saxony,
and Nicole Oresme; and of Italian authors such as James of Forli, Simon of
Lendenaria, and Peter of Mantua—while not neglecting the more realist positions
of Walter Burley and Paul of Venice. The logical subtlety of Dullaert’s endless
dialectics provoked considerable adverse criticism from Vives (Dullaert’s student)
and other humanists” (DSB, 1981: 9:237). Two generations later, the leading
Aristotelean in Italy, Zabarella (352), at the great University of Padua, discussed
Aristotelean physics in complete ignorance of the work of the Merton College and
Buridan groups (EP, 1967: 8:366). - The failure rate for the 1200s is skewed upward by several failures in the 1290s;
prior to that point the success rate was quite high. Estimates of undercounting of
“paper universities,” which received charters but failed to come into existence,
probably make the failure rate for the 1400s 10 to 15 percent too low; see Rashdall
(1936: 2:325–331). Enrollment data from Rashdall (1936: 2:149, 171, 178–191);
Stone (1974b: 91); Simon (1966: 245). - The military and political struggle between pope and emperor during the 1200s
probably explains why there were no universities chartered there during that
period. The Italian ambitions of the emperor finally collapsed in the 1340s, as the
papacy weakened as well. Soon thereafter Prague University was founded, with
charters from both emperor and pope.
Notes to Pages 488–518^ •^991