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Running Head: UNIVERSITAS HOMINUM






The Universitas Hominum of the Immediate Post-Medieval Period
Sherrick Omaine Matthews
Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León
Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Administración Pública



M.A.M Salvador González
April 30, 2008









Abstract
For the late twelfth century and thirteenth century universities rapidly became centers of an astonishingly active intellectual life led primarily by the universities of Paris and Oxford along with the two great Mendicant Orders in the church, the Dominicans and the Franciscans. Of the most original scholars it is worth mentioning St. Thomas Aquinas. The universities and the Orders were the agencies through which the new enlightenment spread, but its content was supplied in the first instance by the recovery of ancient works of science, especially the works of Aristotle. For the most part, John of Salisbury’s conception of law and its universal validity is shared by St. Thomas; Dante however, takes an opposite stance to that taken by Thomas and John of Salisbury.















John of Salisbury
The Policraticus an eight-book compilation written by John of Salisbury in 1159 has the great interest of being the first attempt in the Middle Ages at an extended and systematic treatment of political philosophy and the only such book written before the recovery of Aristotle. It is generally agreed that there is surprisingly little in it that depends consciously on the feudal organization of society which actually prevailed when John wrote. His ideal was rather that of the commonwealth, the res publica. In spite of the centrifugal influences of feudalism the essential idea in John’s political thought...