added onto the texts to be mastered by students. The consensus of most
historians is that these commentaries are unoriginal and pedantic. But it is
possible, as Marshall Hodgson argues, that they merely have not received
attention from Western scholars, and that technical advances are buried within.
Around 1450, in Shiraz (Persia), al-Dawwani included in his supercommentar-
ies on school logic a solution to the liar’s paradox which anticipates Russell’s
theory of types (Hodgson, 1974: 2:472), and there may be more advances of
this sort. But surely this was at least Stagnation (C), technicalities too refined
to come to wider notice. Al-Dawwani’s reputation was largely as a religious
moralist, while his technical creativeness had little following. In the social
organization of the intellectual world, flashes of brilliance had no reflection;
the illusory stagnation of technical refinement led to the real stagnation of
classicism and loss of past achievements.
Center and Disintegration in Christendom
In European Christendom we can follow the steps by which the central focus
of intellectual life built up. There is nothing inherent about the initial attraction
of Paris. In the Carolingian period, the network centers were farther east: at
Fulda and the Palatine court of the emperor, as well as the court at Laon. The
schools of Italy were active by 1000, though their most famous members
moved north. An early dialectician, Anselm of Besate, wandered from Parma
to Mayence, and Lanfranc from Bologna to Bec. Rosecelin taught at Compiège,
Loches, Tours on the lower Loire, Besançon near the Alps (Gilson, 1944:
233–234). Abelard was famous for his travels around 1100–1140, but now
the net was confined to northern France, and he spent increasing time in Paris.
Chartres was a rival center for several generations in the 1100s, but its network
flowed away into Paris by the end of the century. The advantage of Paris was
that it provided in close compass multiple bases for intellectual life. It included
rival jurisdictions of the cathedral, the religious abbeys, the patronage of the
monarchy and eventually the pope (Ferruolo, 1985: 16–17). Italy, despite its
lead both in possessing classical learning and later as a place for Arabic
translations, became a periphery to the network centered on Paris. The teachers
from Bec, Laon, Chartres, and Tours found maximal attention by congregating
in Paris. By 1200, their intersection had promoted the organization of the
university.
The height of creativity, from 1230 to about 1360, was a time of optimal
background conditions. Paris provided the focus, but it was balanced and fed
by other universities and schools linked by migrating teachers and students.
There was an especially important exchange of masters between Paris and
Oxford, both of which had the rare privilege of faculties of theology, owing
Academic Expansion: Medieval Christendom^ •^513