History 342                                                                                        Professor Wertheimer

Study Questions for Thursday, April 1

 

**Note:  Chapter 31 will not be on the exam; we’ll pick it up later in the semester.

 

1).  Section 64, “Letters of Innocent III”

How does Innocent describe the relationship between spiritual and secular authority?  What rights does he say the pope has?  What rights doesn’t he have?  How does he support his arguments?  In these letters, how does Innocent exercise his powers?

 

2).  Section 65: 

What problems do the canons of Lateran IV address?  How do they attempt to shape the behavior of the laity?  of the clergy?

 

3).  Tierney section 68 and 69

(68).  Examine the writings on the Cathars.  What beliefs are attributed to them, and why were those beliefs a challenge to the institutional church? 

(69).  This section represents different ways to deal with the Cathar heresy.  What does the first document (from the Fourth Lateran Council) do?  How do you interpret the second?

 

4).  Tierney section 67 and 70

Compare the writings of the Waldensians and the Franciscans.  What motived Waldes’ conversion and what did he consider to be the ideal Christian life?  How does this compare to the ideals present in the “Testament of St. Francis?”  Also consider the beliefs that the Waldensians developed after their condemnation, and how those beliefs challenged those of the institutional church.

 

5).  Section 82:

            Based on these statutes, what problems did universities confront, and how did they try to resolve them?  What subjects were taught, and how was learning carried out?  How does this compare to education in the cathedral schools?

 

6).  Section 83: Just use this section to get a sense of student life in the medieval universities.

 

7).  Section 84: Thomas Aquinas

* In “Question 1,” what question is he asking?  What conclusion does he reach?  What does this say about scholastic thought on reason and revelation?  This reading is also a good example of the dialectic method; be sure you understand that as well.

* In Question 2, what sources and methods does he use to carry out this proof?  How does he “prove” the existence of God?

* According to Aquinas’s thought in question 94, how are people predisposed to behave, and why?

* Like Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura looked to the natural world in his writing about faith.  How did his thought differ from Aquinas’s?

 

8).  Tierney sec. 66.  These documents show the changing place of Jews in medieval Christendom.  What protections did Jews have under canon law, what restrictions did they have, and what problems did Jews seem to be facing in these texts?