Rethinking the School of Chartres

This book is quite simply a great read. In an age in which the academy is obsessed with "theory," this gentle reintroduction of the great theorists of the age to a new generation of scholars and a broader public can only be profitable. I encourage all those who have not already done so to indulge themselves for a few hours in the company of a book destined to become a classic. Mediaevistik

No one has done more to reveal the riches of twelfth-century Platonism than Father Édouard Jeauneau. It is a great pleasure to read this wonderful scholar's reflections on his long association and deep affinity with Chartres and its teachers.

Winthrop Wetherbee III, Professor Emeritus, Cornell University

Six of the most distinguished and attractive scholars and writers in eleventh- and twelfth-century France are finely portrayed here. All were linked in one way or another to the cathedral of Chartres. With excellent photographs of the twelfth-century sculpted figures on the Royal Portal of Chartres cathedral, Édouard Jeauneau brilliantly links the decoration of the cathedral with their lives and thought.

David Luscombe, Fellow of the British Academy and Emeritus Professor, University of Sheffield

Collectively as well as individually the masters whom Édouard Jeauneau has brought together in his portrait gallery, from Thierry of Chartres and William of Conches to John of Salisbury, embody the intellectual dynamism and cosmopolitan ideals of what is no doubt one of the most fascinating episodes in the history of European scholarship. By painstakingly pointing out their roots in classical literature and Platonic philosophy and highlighting their subtle, pre-scholastic blend of literary, scientific, exegetical, and theological questioning, Jeauneau moves beyond the problem of whether or not the Chartrians were innovative or passé in their own day and into the realm of what it is that we can truly learn from their unique medieval wisdom tradition.

Willemien Otten, University of Chicago Divinity School