School of Chartres

During the High Middle Ages, Chartres Cathedral operated a famous and influential cathedral school, an important center of scholarship. It developed and reached its apex in the 11th and 12th centuries. It was a transitional period, at the very start of the Latin translation movement and right before the spread of medieval universities, which eventually superseded cathedral schools and monastic schools as the most important institutions of higher learning in the Latin West.

In the early 11th century, (c. 1020), Bishop Fulbert established Chartres as one of the leading schools in Europe. Although the role of Fulbert himself as a scholar and teacher has been questioned, perhaps his greatest talent was as an administrator, who established the conditions in which the school could flourish.

Great scholars were attracted to the cathedral school, including Bernard of Chartres, Thierry of Chartres, William of Conches, and the Englishman John of Salisbury. These men were at the forefront of the intense intellectual rethinking that culminated in what is now known as the twelfth-century renaissance, pioneering the Scholastic philosophy that came to dominate medieval thinking throughout Europe.

The teaching in monastic and cathedral schools was typically based on the traditional seven liberal arts, including the trivium (study of logic, grammar and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). There were, however, differences among the schools on the emphasis given for each subject. The Chartres school placed special emphasis on the quadrivium (the mathematical arts) and on natural philosophy.

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