The 20 most important medieval philosophers

From the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century until Columbus set foot in what would later be known as America in 1492, Europe he lived through the Middle Ages, a period commonly known to be dark, culturally poor, and contrary to freedom of thought.

Despite the common belief that people lived in the deepest ignorance, the truth is that there was some light. There are not a few medieval philosophers, both Christians and Muslims, who contributed a bit of reflection and knowledge in a rather uneducated society.

Next we are going to meet 20 philosophers of medieval times who, despite the repression of their time and religious persecution, made known what they thought about the human being, God and the world.

• Related article: "Types of philosophy and main currents of thought"

20 philosophers of medieval times: a summary of their ideas

Despite the fact that the Middle Ages were a dark time, there were not a few men (and the occasional woman) who reflected on the nature of the human being, their relationship with God and what the world was like. Throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, philosophizing was a common exercise, often persecuted by the authorities of the time. Let's meet some philosophers of these centuries.

1. Saint Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430)

Saint Augustine of Hippo was a very important figure in medieval thought, despite the fact that, ironically, he was neither born nor lived in the Middle Ages. His opinions have been fundamental to the history of Christianity., especially in terms of philosophical thought.

He was born in Tagaste, currently Algeria, and during his life he defended the idea that it was possible to know the truth, something that clashed with the skeptical thought widespread at the end of the Ancient Age.

Skeptics argued that absolutely everything could be doubted, but Agustín de Hipona did not think so. He told them that you can doubt everything you want, in effect, but what you cannot doubt is your own doubt., thus refuting skepticism itself and, in a visionary way, introducing the Cartesian notion of “I think, therefore I am”.

Saint Augustine of Hippo does not receive the name of saint for free. As a good religious man, he treated the subject of God as a synonym of truth, in addition to treating the concept of good as the will of God himself.

2. Saint Isidore of Seville (560 - 636)

As with Saint Augustine of Hippo, Saint Isidore of Seville is another great figure in medieval thought who was born before the beginning of the Middle Ages. His philosophy influenced the vision of the world that was held during the following centuries..

He was a great scholar and prolific Hispano-Gothic writer. He wrote down the reality of his time, for which he is considered one of the great historians of the ancient Hispania, before the creation of Al-Andalus and the arrival of its great advances cultural.

San Isidoro spoke of very varied topics, such as history, geography and astronomy, knowledge that he compiled in encyclopedias, biographies of famous people and, as the man of God that he was, he spoke of liturgy and the Church.

His best known work is etymologies, probably written in 634, in which he records all the knowledge he knew and history from pagan times to the seventh century, when Christianity was already beginning its domination of the West.

His opinion of the Jews was that they should stop being Jews. He considered that the Jewish community of Hispania should be converted to Christianity, albeit peacefully. Unfortunately, the Visigothic king of the time, Sisebuto, was more in favor of less "loving" techniques, something that centuries later the Catholic Monarchs would put into practice.

3. Juan Escoto Erigena (815 - 877)

Juan Escoto Erigena was a philosopher of Irish origin, considered the orchestrator of the first great philosophical system of the Middle Ages. He made translations of the works of Platonic philosophers into Latin.

His vision of his universe was particular, and very controversial for his time.. In his work From Visione Nature (865-870) he rejects the idea popularly held in Christianity that the universe was created from absolute nothingness

He considered time and space to be manifestations of ideas to be found within the perfect mind of God. Also he maintained that there should be no censorship by the authority, but that it was the authority that should be based on its own reason.

These controversial visions caused his main work to be condemned several centuries later, and in 1225 ended up going up in flames when, at the Council of Sens, Pope Honorius III ordered his burn.

4. Avicenna (980 - 1037)

Ibn Sina, Latinized as Avicenna, was an illustrious person born in Bukhara, today Uzbekistan. This great medieval Muslim thinker was a doctor, philosopher and scientist, considered the greatest figure of the Islamic faith, after Muhammad.

It is believed that he wrote more than 300 books in which he mainly addressed his two favorite subjects: medicine and philosophy. As a curiosity, he is credited with having invented the tracheotomy.

He is also credited with having managed to make Aristotle's thought known to medieval European society, since with the fall of Rome much Hellenic knowledge fell into oblivion. There are not a few Western works that have returned to Europe at the hands of great Muslim thinkers, such as Avicenna or Averroes.

His thinking was really advanced for its time, revealing a philosophy that would influence later great minds, such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Bonaventure of Fidanza and Duns Scotus.

Just like he happened with St. Augustine of Hippo, Avicenna anticipated the Cartesian maxim that by thinking one exists. He stated that knowing that one exists is undoubted knowledge, since thinking already exists by itself.

Among other topics that he dealt with we have alchemy, being considered one of the greatest alchemists of his time.

5. Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033 - 1109)

Saint Anselm of Canterbury was born in Aosta, Italy. Although he was not born in the British archipelago, he ended up spending a lot of time there after traveling through Europe. In 1070 he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by King William I of England, "the Conqueror".

In his philosophy he made known his belief that God was, without a doubt, the supreme being.. Saint Anselm of Canterbury dedicated his entire life to studying what the attributes of God were, what it was that made him perfect.

For him, not putting faith first was presumption, although, nevertheless, not appealing to reason was also a terrible negligence. Throughout his life he debated the relationship between faith and reason, asking more questions than finding answers.

His teaching was based on meditation, and he considered that it was through this exercise that he could justify the existence of God.

6. Peter Abelard (1079 - 1142)

Pedro Abelardo was a theologian who ended up being one of the most famous figures of the 12th century. As a man of learning he dedicated his life to music, poetry, teaching and debate.

He tried to reconcile realism and nominalism and he exposed, very controversially, that faith was limited by principles of reason. Most of his thought is known thanks to his autobiography. He was a monk of the Order of Saint Benedict.

No matter how monkish he was, he was not spared from the fact that his philosophy was the object of persecution, censorship and destruction. One of his treatises on the Trinity written in 1121 ended up being thrown into the flames by a Catholic council of the time, which considered it a heretical work.

7. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 - 1153)

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was a French monk, known not only for his great influence within the Catholic Church, she but, in addition, she was a key figure in the expansion of Gothic architecture and having contributed to shaping the song Gregorian.

8. Hildegard von Bingen (1098 - 1179)

Hildegarda von Bingen was born in Bermersheim, Germany into a noble family. As she was her tenth child, her parents handed her over to the Disibodenberg monastery on her fourteenth birthday.. That monastery was male, but it accepted a small group of female recluses in an adjoining cell under the direction of Jutta of Sponheim.

Hildegarda had visions that the Church itself would later confirm that they were inspired by God. They were episodes that this thinker lived without losing his senses or suffering ecstasy. She described them as a great light in which images, shapes and vivid colors were presented, accompanied by a voice explaining what she saw and sometimes with background music.

Despite being young, the nuns chose her as abbess. When he was forty-two years old, a stronger episode of visions overtook him, during which he was ordered to write down the visions he had from then on. It is from that moment that Hildegarda writes what she sees in her visions, thus resulting in the creation of her first book. scivias (“Know the ways”), of dogmatic theology.

The other two works of him are Liber Vitae Meritorum, which is about moral theology, and Liber Divinorum Operum, on cosmology, anthropology and theodicy. He also wrote works of a scientific nature, such as Liber Simplicis Medicines either physical, about the healing properties of plants and animals from a more holistic perspective.

Other notable works of his are creating your unknown language, considered the first artificial language in history, for which she was named patron saint of Esperantists, speakers of the auxiliary language Esperanto.

9. Peter Lombard (1100 - 1160)

Pedro Lombardo is a rather mysterious author, since almost nothing is known about the first 30 years of his existence. However, the work of Pedro Lombardo is better known, having a great impact throughout the Middle Ages.

His best known work is he Judgment Book, which was the favorite theological text in medieval universities from 1220. It is a compilation of various biblical texts, which apparently may seem different points of view but that Lombardo tries and manages to make them reconcile.

She considered that marriage should be something consensual, and that for it to be perfect it was not necessary to consume it. This vision of marriage had an impact on later medieval thought, this position being assumed by Pope Alexander III.

• You may be interested in: "Middle Ages: the 16 main characteristics of this historical stage"

10. Heloise of the Paraclete (1101 - 1164)

Eloísa del Páráclito became abbess of the convent of the Paraclete, country monastic community founded in 1131 by the philosopher Pedro Abelardo. Eloísa retired in this monastery after the dramatic end of her love affair with Abelardo himself, who had been her teacher.

His life was one of the most fictional, causing him to be seen as a kind of transcendental figure for love relationships. His conception of his love is that of medieval courtly love, highly inspired by the Celtic legend of Tristan and Isolde. He considered that love was something that should be fed with waiting, giving up for both lovers and mutual understanding..

11. Averroës (1126 - 1198)

Averroes, natively known as Abū l-WalīdʾAḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Rušd is another of the great notable medieval characters from Muslim lands.

Averroes was born in Al-Andalus, standing out as a great philosopher and doctor, being a great teacher of philosophy, sciences such as mathematics, medicine and astronomy, as well as being a great scholar of Islamic law. Throughout his life he reflected on how human beings think. He tried to find out how people formulate universal truths.

As with Avicenna, Averroes she had knowledge of the doctrines of Aristotle, basing her philosophy and her science on them. She analyzed the Aristotelian work and helped define the differences between properly human knowledge and that which was proper to God.

12. Landsberg horseshoe (1130 - 1195)

Herrada de Landsberg was a 12th-century nun and abbess of Hohenburg Abbey in the Vosges Mountains. Coming from a noble Alsatian family, Herrada took the habit at an early age. In 1167 she became abbess and held her position until her death.

About 1165 she had begun the Hortus Deliciarum either The Garden of Earthly Delights, a compendium of all the sciences studied at the time, including, as might be expected, theology. In this work, Herrada details the battles between virtue and vice with especially vivid visual images that accompany the texts. There are about 330 illustrations of theological, philosophical and literary themes, some with historical representation, others representing Herrada's personal experiences.

His illustration technique has been highly appreciated in almost the entire world of art, since shows a very strange imagination considering how other pictorial artists of the XII century.

13. Wilhelmina of Bohemia (1210-1281)

Wilhelmina de Bohemia was very controversial for her time. He claimed to be, neither more nor less, than the female reincarnation of God, and even had a group of followers, the Guillerminos supporters of a paradoxical theology of the feminine and of an absolute sanctification of the body and of the identity of the women.

14. Roger Bacon (1214 - 1292)

Roger Bacon (not to be confused with Francis Bacon), also known as Doctor Mirabilis, he has contributed notably to the empiricist doctrine.

During Bacon's lifetime, physical science had as its main problem starting from traditional arguments instead of using the Aristotelian experimental method. That is to say, experiments were not carried out to expand the new knowledge or refute a previous theory, but rather it was taken for granted that what was already known was what best described reality.

It should be said that Roger Bacon was a controversial character, without qualms about attacking those people who did not think like him. Besides he seriously criticized the immoralities and hypocrisy of the medieval clergy.

In medieval times, being critical of the Catholic Church was reason enough to be imprisoned, in Bacon's case by the Franciscan order. He was isolated in a monastery for about ten years, only being able to communicate with the outside world through letters and with the permission of those who kept him cloistered.

The Church did not sit well with me making him see what he was doing wrong, so he ended up being accused of witchcraft. This accusation would be fueled by the fact that Bacon had investigated Arabic alchemy.

In his works he called for reforms of theological studies, asking that less momentous philosophical questions be given less importance and opt to focus on the Bible, in addition to learning the languages ​​in which it was originally written.

His interest in Latin, Greek and Aramaic was due to the fact that at that time it was very difficult to find interpreters in these languages. Theologians did not know how to read sacred texts in their original language, causing much meaning to be lost from translation to translation.

15. Saint Bonaventure of Fidanza (1221 - 1274)

Saint Bonaventure of Fidanza he considered that the fundamental aspect of religious life was prayer. In the same way that Saint Paul thought, only the Spirit of God could penetrate the hearts of believers, and for this they had to pray.

Saint Bonaventure of Fidanza was a faithful defender of the Franciscan doctrine, which caused him some problems when he was living in Paris, given that in his time a university movement arose very contrary to the vision that the children of San Francisco had regarding faith and the world.

16. Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274)

Thomas Aquinas is, without a doubt, one of the greatest representatives of western thought, one of the most notable representatives of scholasticism. He was a theologian, metaphysician, and one of the first philosophers to combine the thought of Aristotle with the Christian faith.

Thomas Aquinas considered that human reason was very limited and, taking this into account, it would be difficult to get to know God in his fullness. However, this did not mean that true knowledge could not be known through philosophy.

Thomas Aquinas he tried to prove the existence of God by means of a system of which he spoke of five ways. His complex theory starts from the simplest, which were the movements of objects, what their causes were, until reaching the highest path, which was order.

17. Ramón Llull (1232 - 1316)

Ramon Llull is another Franciscan philosopher, born on the island of Majorca. The main merit of him is incorporating the moral thought of chivalry in the world of philosophy and theology. He defended mystical thought and was against rationalism. He defended the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, a vision contrary to that of Thomas Aquinas.

Although he tried to spread the Christian faith in Muslim lands, he had a great interest in the Islamic faith. He even used the doctrines of the Qur'an to write one of his main works "El Llibre d' amic e amat", a book in which he explains the relationship between the believer and God as that of a lover towards his beloved, with a philosophical metaphor for each day of the year.

He defended the conversion of Muslim infidels to Christianity through peaceful means, like affection, love and without any violent action or religious imposition.

18. William Ockham (1285 - 1347)

William Ockham dedicated his life to living in extreme poverty. He tried to study whether the Holy See applied the doctrine of poverty that it supposedly defended, with which he ended up being persecuted. He went so far as to accuse Pope John Paul XXII of being a heretic.

His philosophy has been very important to Western thought, not only during medieval times, but has also come to exert its influence to this day. In fact, Her thought is the basis for the creation of the modern constitutions of many democratic nations..

19. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)

Catherine of Siena is another of the great philosophers of the Middle Ages. Catherine had a decisive visionary experience, appearing to her Jesus who in her vision extracted her heart and exchanged it with that of the philosopher. Love for God is for Catherine of Siena a joyful feeling and a great stimulus to act. Catalina carried out her mission starting from cultural bases enriched over time despite being quite poor.

20. Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466 - 1536)

Erasmus of Rotterdam was a Dutch-born humanist philosopher, philologist, and theologian. She wanted, through the opportunities offered by the universities, to convey her controversial ideas about Catholicism, in addition to asking the Holy See to allow greater freedom of thought.

The Catholic Church had been paralyzed in a thought typical of many previous centuries and, as the Renaissance was at hand, around the corner, the perfect time had come to open up a bit of mind, giving way to great scientific advances and religious.

Erasmus of Rotterdam considered that theology should be the tool to discover Christ, being critical of traditional scholasticism. I saw in the scholastic of the moment a set of hollow discussions of meaning that are of no use in bringing a man to faith. For him the gospel had to be accessible to all people and in all languages, and not in the infamous Latin of the time that not even the priests understood.

Bibliographic references:

• Chavez, P. (2004). History of philosophical doctrines. National Autonomous University of Mexico: Mexico.
• Leman, O. (1988). Averroes and his Philosophy. Routledge: USA.
• Copleston, F. (1960). Saint Thomas of Aquino. History of philosophy Volume II. Retrieved July 27, 2019. Available in https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/33784667/2_Copleston-Tomas.pdf? AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1522832718&Signature=aiA9XmknZWf1QycxeUsnYwFi54A%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3D2_Copleston-Tomas.pdf