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Aristotle was the figure who dominated every part of the university curriculum, from Salerno and Toledo to Paris and Oxford and Louvain, from the seven liberal arts to medicine, law, and especially theology. Aristotle was, in the Arab phrase made famous by the poet Dante, “the Master of Those Who Know.” He was also the supreme teacher of all those who wanted to know. The standard way to learn any subject was first to read Aristotle’s own works on it line by line from cover to cover, then pore over the commentaries on the work by Boethius, Duns Scotus, Peter Lombard, and Thomas Aquinas (whose works were rehabilitated when he was canonized in 1323). Finally, the student would write up his own series of quaestiones, or logical debating points, that seemed to arise from the text, and which were themselves reflections on past scholars’ debates on Aristotle.
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Arthur Herman (The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization)