The Envy of Angels

In The Envy of Angels, C. Stephen Jaeger studies the German and French cathedral schools, the major centers of secular learning in Europe until the rise of the universities in the twelfth century. Jaeger argues that cathedral schools revived the learning of classical antiquity, shaped the codes of civility and courtesy, and ultimately transformed the social and intellectual life of Europe.

He further proposes that the schools were closely associated with medieval humanism and the Renaissance of the twelfth century, with the rise of Gothic style in architecture and sculpture, and with the formation of a courtly society, courtly literature, and courtly love.

The story of the rise and fall of the cathedral schools from 950 to 1200 is also the story of the transition in Europe from a charismatic world based on orality, memory, and personal authority to an intellectual culture based on literacy, texts, and written records.

Jaeger is particularly concerned with this notion of charismatic culture; he argues that the aim of charismatic teaching was to shape the student's character through the mystical force of the master's personality. The curriculum was not primarily defined by the set texts of study; the teacher himself was the curriculum, his presence radiating a transforming force to his students.

The essential feature of charismatic culture is that it makes the body and the physical presence into the medium which transmits cultural values. The controlled body with all its attributes - grace, posture, charm, sensuality, beauty - is the work of art of the eleventh century. If this ideal did not register in sculpture, art, or fiction, it is because the eleventh century had or sought the thing itself.

The human presence was the raw material ready to be shaped and formed like the clay on the potter's wheel or the sculptor's marble block, and the end product was a disciplined human being. The Envy of Angels will be of interest to students and scholars of medieval history, religion, literature, and art.