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ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL THOUGHT AND LEARNING
Poole's "Illustrations" has for many years been a landmark and a guide to anyone interested in the history of medieval philosophy. In a scholarly work remarkable for its great readability and interest to the layman, Poole caught all the intellectual ferment that characterized medieval times, giving us so clear a picture of the age that his book has hardly been equalled in this century. Scholars still refer to it as a standard work; beginners in the study of the middle ages find it one of the best introductions to their specialty available; and thousands of laymen have found that it brings alive the ideas of the great medieval thinkers as few other works do.
The author concentrates on the leading philosophers an ecclesiastics between the 8th and 14th centuries: John Scotus, Bernard of Chartres, Peter Abailard, Gilbert of La Porrée, John of Salisbury, Marsiglio of Padua, William of Ockham, and Wycliffe. These were men of astounding intellectual power, concentrating all their faculties on the ultimate problems of life—and the author, often quoting copiously from their major works, gives us their answers to these problems with great insight and clarity. Besides clarifying the positions of each on the raging questions of the day—original sin, the existence of Hell, predestination, the problem of evil, and other subjects in the domain of formal and religious philosophy—the author also comments on the strictly political philosophies of each. He includes an account of their lives, positions among their contemporaries, and influence on later thought as well.
It is only relatively recently that we have become aware of the heights to which medieval civilization had risen, and the men covered in this book, as the outstanding representatives of that civilization, invite our study and understanding. Nearly always engaged in some tremendous controversy—realists vs. nominalists, Platonists vs. Aristotelians, church vs. state, Abailard vs. Bernard of Clairvaux—they were denounced as dangerous—but their writings remain to give us a unique picture of their own philosophies and their time.
Unabridged reprint of revised and augmented 2nd edition (published in 1920).
The author concentrates on the leading philosophers an ecclesiastics between the 8th and 14th centuries: John Scotus, Bernard of Chartres, Peter Abailard, Gilbert of La Porrée, John of Salisbury, Marsiglio of Padua, William of Ockham, and Wycliffe. These were men of astounding intellectual power, concentrating all their faculties on the ultimate problems of life—and the author, often quoting copiously from their major works, gives us their answers to these problems with great insight and clarity. Besides clarifying the positions of each on the raging questions of the day—original sin, the existence of Hell, predestination, the problem of evil, and other subjects in the domain of formal and religious philosophy—the author also comments on the strictly political philosophies of each. He includes an account of their lives, positions among their contemporaries, and influence on later thought as well.
It is only relatively recently that we have become aware of the heights to which medieval civilization had risen, and the men covered in this book, as the outstanding representatives of that civilization, invite our study and understanding. Nearly always engaged in some tremendous controversy—realists vs. nominalists, Platonists vs. Aristotelians, church vs. state, Abailard vs. Bernard of Clairvaux—they were denounced as dangerous—but their writings remain to give us a unique picture of their own philosophies and their time.
Unabridged reprint of revised and augmented 2nd edition (published in 1920).
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1920
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