What Even Is Charity?
In the Middle Ages, charity didn't just mean giving a few bucks to a worthy cause; its ultimate grand prize purpose was perfecting your relationship with this ultimate VIP.
Who is God?
Because he was a really tall, quiet, studious guy, his college classmates gave him this less-than-flattering nickname.
What is "The Dumb Ox"?
In 1221, teachers and students in Paris started using the Latin word universitas—which originally meant an independent society or corporation—giving us our modern word for this.
What is a university?
Medieval theologians had to constantly draw a fine line between charity (loving God and others) and this greedy, sinful love that seeks selfish benefits.
What is cupidity?
An anchorite was a dedicated person who lived completely apart from society inside a tiny "cell" or cave, effectively becoming this to the outside world.
What is "dead to the world"?
Along with hope and faith, charity made up this special trio of virtues that didn't come from good habits, but were given directly as a gift from the Holy Spirit.
What are the theological (or infused) virtues?
Thomas Aquinas wrote a massive, million-word theological masterpiece with a Latin name that sounds like a wizard spell.
What is the Summa theologica?
Because early universities didn't have their own fancy campus buildings yet, students and professors usually had to gather and study inside these buildings.
What are churches?
Saint Augustine defined this sinful impulse as wanting to enjoy yourself, your neighbor, or random physical things not on account of God.
What is cupidity?
Before being locked away in their tiny cells forever, anchorites actually had this dramatic service performed over them.
What is the service of the dead?
Saint Martin of Tours became a total medieval style icon of charity in action when he took a sword and split this clothing item in half to share with a freezing beggar.
What is his army cloak?
Aquinas famously argued that "reason does not destroy faith, but does this to it."
What is perfect it?
The cool, classic debate trick where teachers used logic to back a false argument into a corner until its contradictions blew up in its face.
What is dialectic?
Peter Abelard was a brilliant philosophy teacher who got into hot water after being hired to tutor a young woman with this famous name.
Who is Héloïse?
While western universities focused heavily on religion and theology, schools in the Byzantine Empire had a more practical goal: training these people to work for the empire.
What are administrators?
According to the text, wealthy medieval folks loved showing their charity by endowing hospitals or building these heavy-duty religious communities.
What is a monastery?
To prove God exists, Aquinas argued that every moving object had to be set in motion by a first force, which he called this.
What is the Prime Mover (or Unmoved Mover)?
If you went to the University of Bologna in Italy, you had a lot of student power because students held the purse strings and could literally do this to teachers who crossed them.
What is withhold payment (stop paying them)?
After a dramatic and violent attack by Héloïse’s angry uncle, Abelard didn't quit; he entered a prominent abbey and eventually founded a convent for nuns led by whom?
Who is Héloïse?
Aquinas’s teacher, a German scholar known as Albert the Great (or this Latin name), helped set up a major center of learning in Cologne.
Who is Albertus Magnus?
Medieval etiquette rule: you were definitely not supposed to draw attention to your good deeds, because bragging about your charity would instantly do this to its moral value.
What is lessen it (or ruin the moral worth)?
Proving that parent plans don't always work out, Aquinas's parents sent him to the Abbey of Monte Cassino at age five hoping he'd become an abbot, but he chose to join this active religious order instead.
What are the Dominicans (Dominican friars)?
While Paris was famous for arts and theology and Bologna for law, this southern French city was the go-to spot if you wanted a top-tier medical education.
What is Montpellier?
Proving their tragic love story transcended middle school drama, Peter Abelard and Héloïse ended up being buried here together.
What is together (in the same tomb)?
Pope John XXII finally canonized Thomas Aquinas in this year, making his official stamp as a saint permanent.
What is 1323?