The title of Frank Rexroth's book on early medieval western scholasticism is playful: Fröhliche Scholastik, not Frühscholastik, the emphasis being put not upon scholastic doctrine but upon what he sees as the happy formation of new forms of scholarly identity that were created through a series of transformations between about 1050 and 1250 in ways of thought, teaching and learning and in ways of organising available knowledge and forming groups to support this. The main focus is upon interactions and tensions created by advances in learning and differences of outlook concerning the forms of teaching and the kinds of institutions that would best meet changing needs. That many scholars typically came to argue and think in a distinctive scholastic or a dialectical way (scholastice, dialectice) was not a predetermined nor a universal outcome and Rexroth finds most available explanations of the development of Scholastik inadequate. His review of the differences that have been held to characterise monastic, scholastic and humanist cultures leaves him unconvinced that the Carolingian ideal of masters such as Fulbert, not just transmitting knowledge but themselves providing total models for living, altogether lost its charismatic features when a more intellectual phase opened, and when, for example, pupils became critics of their masters as Abelard was of William of Champeaux and of Anselm of Laon. As for the appearance of intellectuals Rexroth describes J. Le Goff's widely-read study of Intellectuals in the Middle Ages (1957) as a parable about the culture of the Latin Quarter in Paris in the late 1950s. Other recent accounts of an intellectual revolution that have been proposed, especially for the twelfth century, are seen to be too shiny and inclusive, for schools had many aspects. The great strength of this book is that Rexroth looks more closely than anyone before him at the available historical sources, at the evidence for self-referencing identities, and at features such as the vocabulary, phraseology and techniques of writing that were used in different settings. He himself writes as a cultural historian searching for definition of scholastic culture. But, as in a kaleidoscope, he sees all sorts of utopias and enthusiasms developing in different social and economic settings. While cities and royal and noble residences provided opportunities for schools to become well established institutions, and while scholars responded to a range of needs for religion, government, the common good, health and full-time employment, there were also, especially from the late eleventh century, numerous wandering, freelance teachers, gyrovagi, living unsettled lives as drop-outs, running independent schools and receiving much criticism for asking novel and unholy questions, tackling the most difficult books of the Bible and pursuing rivalries. Dialecticians and anti-dialecticians campaigned over ways of living as well as thinking. What these peripatetics stood for in terms of an intellectual profile is not clear cut but Rexroth looks at these new, fluid groupings from a wide social historical perspective that embraces contemporary reactions on the part of all social categories and that led to the formation of new hermit groups as well as schools, confraternities and guilds – a mix out of which universities were to emerge. Gregorian reform itself unleashed forces to try and bring down older established institutions and practices, thereby generating new communities. Wandering masters and their pupils need to be seen, as the sociologist Marcel Mauss might see them, as part of a total social phenomenon in which were found groups of all sorts, groups which explored vigorously, in the period between around 1070 and the 1140s, different approaches to scholarly and philosophical enquiry, different ways of expressing truth and handling doubt and venting disagreement.

One of the main challenges faced by Rexroth is the question of the place that humanism found in an increasingly scholastic environment. The schoolmen themselves did not generally engage in elegant correspondence but they were more likely to do so after leaving the schools and accepting higher responsibilities and, as Rexroth finely observes, as knowledge became a more complex business, letters that gave an expert opinion were increasingly sought and supplied. Had Rexroth extended this study to include the schools around the year 1200 he might also have allowed that the schoolmen were then becoming less indifferent to social and practical problems, but this would not by itself close the gap between humanist and scholastic cultures.

The years around 1170 are of particular importance in Rexroth's eyes as marking a turning point: the last of the conservative critics of new learning, Gerhoh of Reichersberg (for Rexroth: the last Mohican) died in 1170. It became apparent during the twelfth century that the seven liberal arts could not provide an adequate framework into which to fit philosophy when translations and other methods of ‘cultural brokerage’ were bringing to Latin Europe so much new and heterogeneous Greek, Arabic and Jewish scholarship and reshaping the contours of the liberal arts, and when both the study and the practice of medicine, law and theology were being radically transformed. Canon law in particular was a wholly original branch of scholarship and the rediscovery in the eleventh century of the Digest was scarcely less of an innovation as it enabled the other books of Roman law to be learned in a scholarly way, for legal scholarship to support legal practice. Yet, and almost in defiance of this increasing plurality of disciplines and of institutions, it was by following the model of a guild, and by moving on from the traditions of the cathedral and collegiate schools that individual schools came together in an urban context, at first in Paris, Bologna and Oxford, and coalesced into unitary organisations – the universitas – in which higher studies as well as the arts could be pursued. But Rexroth also argues that this was no ‘one way street’: at the time of its foundation ecclesiastical authority sought to apply the brakes to further philosophical study in the university of Paris by giving support to the older tradition of studying the liberal arts.

An English translation of this pivotal book would be widely welcomed.