Tomasello, Andrew. Music and Ritual at Papal Avignon, 1309–1403. Ann Arbor: UMI Research
Press, 1983.
PHILOSOPHY
. As the Roman Empire was crumbling in Gaul, so too was the classical tradition of both
pagan and Christian Greek and Latin learning. The age of the Latin fathers ended
effectively with the death of Augustine of Hippo in North Africa in 430, and the heritage
of classical thought was summed up and passed on to the western Middle Ages largely in
the philosophical and theological works of “the last Roman,” Boethius, who was
executed at the Pavian court of King Theodoric in 524. It was not until the Carolingian
period, and especially the era of intellectual contacts with Muslim and Jewish Arabic
scholars in southern Europe, that more classical texts, particularly by Greek authors,
became available.
Traditionally, Latin Europe from the 6th to the 9th century is thought of as barren of
philosophy and theology, but as Romanitas was being replaced by Christianitas in the
Gaul of the 5th century, there are sporadic signs of continuing literary and philosophical
learning in a world otherwise fraught with a lack of intellectual activity. Thus Sidonius
Apollinaris (ca. 432-ca. 485), bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, kept alive the humanist arts of
letter writing and historical narrative. Philosophically important for this period is the
exchange between Faustus of Riez in Provence (d. ca. 495) and Claudianus Mamertus of
Vienne (d. ca. 474) on the locality and materiality of the soul. Merovingian culture
continued to evince love for traditional classical culture, especially among Romano-
Gallic aristocrats and the bishops who were related to them. The Council of Vaison (529),
besides reforming church liturgy, played an important role in this conservation by
prescribing the teaching of Latin to ensure the education in arts (philosophy in a broad
sense) and in theology of future clerics.
The establishment of monasteries at Annegray, Luxeuil, and Fontaines by the Irish
peregrinus Columbanus (fl. 600) and the Benedictine Rule, introduced into France from
Italy at the end of the 7th century, both created a new emphasis in studies. Secular
classical learning was downgraded in favor of exegetical studies of the Bible and the
organization of the liturgy. Especially illustrative of this period is the dispute between
Pope Gregory the Great (ca. 540–604) and Desiderius (Didier) of Vienne (fl. 596–601)
on the love for and merits of pagan classical, particularly Greek, literature, grammar, and
rhetoric. Gregory set the stage for medieval intellectual life by claiming that the liberal
arts and what we today would call philosophical methodology are indispensable for the
correct interpretation of the written Word of God but that they should be used for that
purpose alone. Elements of the classical tradition were, however, preserved in the works
of men like Gregory of Tours (d. 594) and Venantius Fortunatus (540–600), who died as
bishop of Poitiers.
It must be noted, too, that the role of women in the preservation of classical education
in Merovingian Gaul was not insignificant. Regrettably, few sources have survived. An
indicative example, though, is a letter from Caesaria, abbess of the convent at Arles, to
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