Ecstasy in the Classroom

Ecstasy in the Classroom explores the interface between academic theology and ecstatic experience in the first half of the thirteenth century, which were formative years in the history of the University of Paris, medieval Europe's “fountain of knowledge.” It considers little known and often unedited texts by William of Auxerre, Philip the Chancellor, William of Auvergne, Alexander of Hales (OFM), Roland of Cremona (OP), Hugh of St Cher, and others, to reconstruct the ways in which they addressed questions about Paul’s rapture and other modes of seeing God. As the book’s subtitle suggests, it seeks to do three things. The first is to map and analyze the scholastic discourse of a group of theologians about rapture and other modes of cognition in the first half of the thirteenth century. The second is to explicate the complex, implicit perception of the self they imply and to locate its echoes in contemporary literature, hagiography and other materials. The third is to read these discussions as a window on the predicaments of a newborn community of medieval professionals and thereby elucidate foundational tensions in the emergent academic culture and its social and cultural context. With this triple aim, Ecstasy in the Classroom challenges the often rigid historiographical boundaries between scholastic thought and medieval cultural history and joins the unified approach to intellectual creation, the conditions of its production, and its key instruments.