The 20 Most Important Philosophers Of Medieval Times

From the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century until Columbus set foot in what would later be known as America in 1492, Europe lived through the Middle Ages, a period commonly known for being dark, culturally poor, and contrary to freedom of thought.

Although the common belief is that people lived in the deepest ignorance, the truth is that there was some light. There are many medieval philosophers, both Christian and Muslim, who contributed a bit of reflection and knowledge to a rather uncultured society.

Medieval philosophy refers to the philosophical thought and activity that occurred during the Middle Ages, a period that spanned from the 5th to the late 15th century. This era was a time of significant intellectual development, where scholars sought to reconcile classical philosophy, especially that of Aristotle and Plato, with Christian theology. The contributions of medieval philosophers laid the groundwork for later developments in philosophy, theology, science, and politics.

Next we are going to meet 20 philosophers from medieval times who, despite the repression of their time and religious persecution, made known what they thought about human beings, God and the world.

20 philosophers of medieval times: a summary of their ideas

Although the Middle Ages were a dark time, there were many men (and some women) who reflected on the nature of human beings, their relationship with God and what the world was like. Throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, philosophizing was a common exercise, often persecuted by the authorities of the time. Let’s meet some philosophers from these centuries.

1. Saint Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430)

Saint Augustine of Hippo was a very important figure in medieval thought, although, ironically, he was neither born nor lived in the Middle Ages. His opinions have been fundamental for the history of Christianity especially in terms of philosophical thought.

He was born in Tagaste, currently Algeria, and during his life he defended the idea that it was possible to know the truth, something that clashed with the skeptical thinking widespread at the end of Antiquity.

Skeptics argued that absolutely everything could be doubted, but Augustine of Hippo did not think the same. He told them that you can doubt anything you want, in fact, but what you cannot doubt is your own doubt. Thus refuting skepticism itself and, in a visionary way, introducing the Cartesian notion of “I think, therefore I am.”

Saint Augustine of Hippo does not receive the name of saint for free. As a good religious man, he treated the topic of God as synonymous with truth, in addition to treating the concept of good as the will of God himself.

Augustine is one of the most influential philosophers in the Western world. His work bridges late antiquity and the Middle Ages, especially in relation to Christian philosophy. Augustine’s key works include The Confessions and The City of God, in which he explored issues such as free will, the nature of evil, and the relationship between faith and reason. He helped develop the concept of original sin and emphasized the importance of divine grace in salvation.

Major Contribution:

• Developed the doctrine of original sin and emphasized the necessity of God’s grace for salvation.

2. Saint Isidore of Seville (560 – 636)

As with Saint Augustine of Hippo, Saint Isidore of Seville is another great character of medieval thought who was born before the beginning of the Middle Ages. His philosophy influenced the worldview that was held during subsequent centuries.

He was a great wise and prolific Spanish-Gothic writer. He noted the reality of his time, which is why he is considered one of the great historians of ancient Hispania, before the creation of Al-Andalus and the arrival of its great cultural advances.

Saint Isidore spoke about a wide variety of topics, such as history, geography and astronomy, knowledge that he compiled in encyclopedias, biographies of illustrious people and, as a man of God, he spoke about liturgy and the Church.

His best known work is Etymologiesprobably written in 634, in which he captures all the knowledge he knew and the history from pagan times to the 7th century when Christianity was already beginning its domination of the West.

His opinion about Jews was that they should stop being Jews. He considered that the Hebrew community of Hispania should be converted to Christianity, although peacefully. Unfortunately, the Visigoth king of the time, Sisebuto, was more in favor of less “loving” techniques, something that centuries later the Catholic Monarchs would put into practice.

3. John Duns Scotus (1266-1308)

Duns Scotus was a Scottish philosopher and theologian who is known for his work in metaphysics and the philosophy of religion. He developed the concept of “univocity of being,” which suggests that being itself can be predicated in the same way of both God and creatures, and his defense of the Immaculate Conception.

His vision of the universe was particular, and very controversial for his time. In his work From Visione Naturae (865-870) rejects the idea popularly widespread in Christianity that the universe was created from absolute nothingness.

He considered time and space to be manifestations of ideas that must be found within the perfect mind of God. Also he maintained that there should be no censorship on the part of authority, but that it was authority that should be based on reason itself.

These controversial visions caused his main work to be condemned several centuries later, and in 1225 it ended up being consumed by flames when, at the Council of Sens, Pope Honorius III ordered its burning.

Major Contribution:

• Developed the notion of the univocity of being and contributed to the philosophy of divine will.

4. Avicenna (980 – 1037)

Ibn Sina, Latinized as Avicenna, was an illustrious person born in Bukhara, today Uzbekistan. This great medieval Muslim thinker was a doctor, philosopher and scientist, considered the greatest character of the Islamic faith, after Muhammad.

It is believed that he wrote more than 300 books in which mainly addressed his two favorite topics: medicine and philosophy. As a curiosity, he is credited with having invented the tracheostomy.

He is also credited with having managed to make Aristotle’s thought known to medieval European society, since with the fall of Rome much Hellenic knowledge fell into oblivion. There are many Western works that have returned to Europe at the hands of great Muslim thinkers, such as Avicenna or Averroes.

His thinking was truly advanced for its time, revealing a philosophy that would influence later great minds, such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Bonaventure of Fidanza and Duns Scotus.

As happened with Saint Augustine of Hippo, Avicenna anticipated the Cartesian maxim that by thinking one exists. He stated that knowing that one exists is undoubtable knowledge, since by thinking one already exists by itself.

Among other topics he dealt with is alchemy, being considered one of the greatest alchemists of his time.

Avicenna was a Persian polymath whose works in philosophy, medicine, and science influenced both Islamic and Western thought. His most famous philosophical work, The Book of Healing, tackled metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, particularly the nature of the soul and existence.

Major Contribution:

• His interpretation of Aristotle shaped both Islamic and Christian scholastic thought.

5. Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033 – 1109)

Saint Anselm of Canterbury was born in Aosta, Italy. Although he was not born in the British archipelago, he ended up spending a long time there after traveling through Europe. In 1070 he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by King William I of England, “the Conqueror.”

In his philosophy he made known his belief that God was, without a doubt, the supreme being. Saint Anselm of Canterbury dedicated his entire life to studying what the attributes of God were, what made him perfect.

For him, not putting faith first was presumption, although, however, not appealing to reason was also a terrible negligence. Throughout his life he debated the relationship that faith and reason should maintain, asking more questions than finding answers.

His teaching was based on meditation and he considered that it was through this exercise that he could justify the existence of God.

Anselm is best known for his arguments for the existence of God, particularly the ontological argument, which asserts that the very concept of God implies His existence. His works also delve into the nature of faith, reason, and the relationship between the two.

Major Contribution:

• Formulated the ontological argument for the existence of God.

6. Peter Abelard (1079 – 1142)

Peter Abelard was a theologian who ended up being one of the most famous figures of the 12th century. As a man of knowledge he dedicated his life to music, poetry, teaching and debate.

He tried to reconcile realism and nominalism and argued, very controversially, that faith was limited by principles of reason. Most of his thoughts are known thanks to his autobiography. He was a monk of the Order of Saint Benedict.

No matter how much of a monk he was, his philosophy was not spared from persecution, censorship and destruction. One of his treatises on the Trinity written in 1121 ended up being thrown into the flames by a Catholic council of the time, which considered it a heretical work.

Abelard was a key figure in medieval scholasticism and known for his work in logic and ethics. His most famous work, Sic et Non (Yes and No), focused on resolving apparent contradictions in Christian doctrine through logical analysis.

Major Contribution:

• Developed the method of dialectical reasoning in the context of theology.

7. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153)

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was a French monk, known not only for his great influence within the Catholic Church, but also for being a key figure in the expansion of Gothic architecture and having contributed to shaping Gregorian chant.

8. Hildegard von Bingen (1098 – 1179)

Hildegarda von Bingen was born in Bermersheim, Germany into a noble family. Being the tenth child, her parents gave her to the Disibodenberg monastery when she turned fourteen. That monastery was male, but accepted a small group of female inmates in an adjoining cell under the direction of Jutta of Sponheim.

Hildegard had visions that the Church itself would later confirm were inspired by God. They were episodes that this thinker lived without losing his senses or suffering ecstasy. He described them as a great light in which images, shapes and bright colors were presented, accompanied by a voice explaining what he saw and, sometimes, with background music.

Despite being young, the nuns chose her as abbess. When he was forty-two years old, a more severe episode of visions occurred to him, during which he received the order to write down the visions he had from then on. It is from that moment on that Hildegard writes what she sees in her visions, thus resulting in the creation of her first book. Scivias (“Know the ways”), of dogmatic theology.

His other two works are Liber Vitae Meritorumwhich is about moral theology, and Liber Divinorum Operumon cosmology, anthropology and theodicy. He also wrote works of a scientific nature, such as Liber Simplicis Medicinae either Physicsabout the healing properties of plants and animals from a more holistic perspective.

Other of his notable works are creating your unknown languageconsidered the first artificial language in history for which she was named patron saint of Esperantists, speakers of the auxiliary language Esperanto.

9. Peter Lombard (1100 – 1160)

Pedro Lombardo is a rather mysterious author, since almost nothing is known about his first 30 years of existence. However, the work of Pedro Lombardo is better known, having a great impact throughout the Middle Ages.

His best known work is Sentence Bookwhich was the favorite theological text in medieval universities after 1220. It is a compilation of several biblical texts, which on the surface may seem to be different points of view, but which Lombardo tries and manages to reconcile.

He considered that marriage should be consensual, and that for it to be perfect it was not necessary to consume it. This vision of marriage had an impact on later medieval thought, with this position being assumed by Pope Alexander III.

10. Heloise of the Paraclete (1101 – 1164)

Heloise of the Paraclete became abbess of the convent of the Paraclete a rural monastic community founded in 1131 by the philosopher Pedro Abelard. Heloise retired to this monastery after the dramatic end of her love relationship with Abelard himself, who had been her teacher.

Her life was one of the most romantic, making her seen as a kind of transcendental figure for love relationships. His conception of love is that of medieval courtly love, greatly inspired by the Celtic legend of Tristan and Isolde. He considered that love was something that should be nourished with waiting, communication between both lovers and mutual understanding.

11. Averroes (1126 – 1198)

Averroes, born Abū l-WalīdʾAḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Rušd, is another of the great medieval figures of Muslim lands.

Averroes was born in Al-Andalus, standing out as a great philosopher and doctor, being a great teacher of philosophy, sciences such as mathematics, medicine and astronomy, in addition to being a great student of Islamic law. Throughout his life he reflected on how human beings think. He tried to find out how people formulate universal truths.

As with Avicenna, Averroes had knowledge of the doctrines of Aristotle basing his philosophy and science on them. He analyzed the Aristotelian work and contributed to defining the differences between properly human knowledge and that which was proper to God.

Averroes was a Spanish philosopher who is known for his commentaries on Aristotle, which greatly influenced both Islamic philosophy and medieval European thinkers. He emphasized the importance of reason and believed that philosophy and religion could coexist, even when they appeared to conflict.

Major Contribution:

• Advocated for the compatibility of philosophy and Islamic theology.

12. Landsberg Horse Shoe (1130 – 1195)

Herrada of Landsberg was a 12th-century nun and abbess of Hohenburg Abbey in the Vosges Mountains. Coming from a noble Alsatian family, Herrada took the habit at an early age. In 1167 she became abbess and retained her position until her death.

Around 1165 the Hortus Deliciarum either The Garden of Delightsa compendium of all the sciences studied at the time, including, as one would expect, theology. In this work Herrada details the battles between virtue and vice with especially vivid visual images that accompany the texts. There are about 330 illustrations of theological, philosophical and literary themes some with historical representation, others representing Herrada’s personal experiences.

The technique of his illustrations has been highly appreciated in almost the entire art world, since it demonstrates a very strange imagination considering how other pictorial artists of the 12th century drew.

13. Wilhelmina of Bohemia (1210-1281)

Wilhelmina of Bohemia was very controversial for her time. She claimed to be, neither more nor less, than the female reincarnation of God, and even had a group of followers, the Williamites who supported a paradoxical theology of the feminine and an absolute sanctification of the body and identity of women.

14. Roger Bacon (1214 – 1292)

Roger Bacon (not to be confused with Francis Bacon), also known as Doctor Mirabilis, has contributed significantly to the empiricist doctrine.

During Bacon’s lifetime, physical science had as its main problem starting from traditional arguments instead of using the Aristotelian experimental method. That is, experiments were not done to expand new knowledge or refute a previous theory, but rather it was assumed that what was already known was what best described reality.

It should be said that Roger Bacon was a conflictive character, without qualms about attacking those people who did not have the same opinion as him. Besides he seriously criticized the immoralities and hypocrisy of the medieval clergy.

In medieval times, being critical of the Catholic Church was reason enough to be imprisoned, in Bacon’s case by the Franciscan order. He was isolated in a monastery for about ten years, only being able to communicate with the outside world through letters and with the permission of those who kept him cloistered.

It didn’t sit well with the Church to make him see what he was doing wrong, so he ended up being accused of witchcraft. This accusation would be fueled by the fact that Bacon had researched Arabic alchemy.

In his works he called for reforms in theological studies asking that less importance be given to less transcendental philosophical issues and to choose to focus on the Bible, in addition to learning the languages ​​in which it was originally written.

His interest in Latin, Greek and Aramaic was due to the fact that at that time it was very difficult to find interpreters in these languages. Theologians did not know how to read sacred texts in their original language, causing much meaning to be lost from translation to translation.

Roger Bacon was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who advocated for the use of empirical methods in scientific investigation. He is often regarded as one of the early proponents of the scientific method, emphasizing the importance of experimentation and observation.

Major Contribution:

• Advocated for empirical science and the use of the scientific method in inquiry.

15. Saint Bonaventure of Fidanza (1221 – 1274)

Saint Bonaventure of Fidanza considered that the fundamental aspect of religious life was prayer. In the same way that Saint Paul believed, only the Spirit of God could penetrate the hearts of believers, and for this they had to pray.

Saint Bonaventure of Fidanza was a faithful defender of the Franciscan doctrine, which caused him some problems when he was living in Paris, given that in his time a university movement emerged that was very contrary to the vision that the children of Saint Francis had regarding the faith. and to the world.

16. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274)

Thomas Aquinas is, without a doubt, one of the greatest representatives of Western thought one of the most notable representatives of scholasticism. He was theologian, metaphysician and one of the first philosophers who combined the thought of Aristotle with the Christian faith.

Thomas Aquinas considered that human reason was very limited and that, taking this into account, it would be difficult to know God in his fullness. However, this did not mean that true knowledge could not be known through philosophy.

Thomas Aquinas tried to demonstrate the existence of God through a system of which he spoke of five ways. His complex theory starts from the simplest, which were the movements of objects, what were their causes, until reaching the highest path, which was order.

Aquinas was a Dominican friar whose synthesis of Christian theology and Aristotelian philosophy became one of the most influential systems in Western philosophy. His magnum opus, Summa Theologica, addresses the nature of God, the universe, and human beings, and he is known for his arguments for the existence of God, including the Five Ways.

Major Contribution:

• Integrated Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology, developing the doctrine of natural law.

17. Ramon Llull (1232 – 1316)

Ramon Llull is another Franciscan philosopher, born on the island of Mallorca. Its main merit is to incorporate the moral thinking of chivalry into the world of philosophy and theology. He defended mystical thought and was against rationalism. He defended the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, a vision contrary to that of Thomas Aquinas.

Although he tried to spread the Christian faith in Muslim lands, he had a great interest in the Islamic faith. He even used the doctrines of the Koran to write one of his main works “El Llibre d’amic e amat”, a book in which the relationship between the believer and God is explained as that of a lover with his beloved, with a metaphor. philosophical for every day of the year.

He defended the conversion of Muslim infidels to Christianity through peaceful means, like affection, love and without any violent action or religious imposition.

18. William Ockham (1285 – 1347)

William Ockham dedicated his life to living in extreme poverty. He tried to study whether the Holy See applied the doctrine of poverty that it supposedly defended, with which he ended up being persecuted. He even accused Pope John Paul XXII of being a heretic.

His philosophy has been very important for Western thought, not only during the medieval period, but has also exerted its influence to this day. In fact, His thought is the basis for the creation of the modern constitutions of many democratic nations.

Ockham is best known for his principle of parsimony, known as “Ockham’s Razor,” which asserts that when faced with competing explanations, one should select the simplest one. He was a key figure in nominalism, arguing that universal concepts do not exist independently of the particular things they describe.

Major Contribution:

• Formulated Ockham’s Razor, which emphasized simplicity in explanation.

19. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)

Catherine of Siena is another of the great philosophers of the Middle Ages. Catalina had a decisive visionary experience, when Jesus appeared to her, who in her vision extracted his heart and exchanged it with that of the philosopher. The love of God is for Catherine of Siena a joyful feeling and a great stimulus to act. Catalina carried out her mission based on cultural bases that were enriched over time despite being quite poor.

20. Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466 – 1536)

Erasmus of Rotterdam was a humanist philosopher, philologist and theologian born in the Netherlands. He wanted, through the opportunities offered by universities, to transmit his controversial ideas about Catholicism, in addition to asking the Holy See to allow greater freedom of thought.

The Catholic Church had been paralyzed in a thinking typical of many previous centuries and, as the Renaissance was just around the corner, the perfect time had arrived to open its mind a little, giving way to great scientific and religious advances.

Erasmus of Rotterdam considered that theology should be the tool that allowed Christ to be discovered, being critical of traditional scholasticism. He saw in the scholasticism of the moment a set of hollow discussions of meaning that serve no purpose in bringing a man closer to faith. For him, the gospel had to be accessible to all people and in all languages, and not in the infuriating Latin of the time that not even the priests understood.

These philosophers represent a wide range of intellectual movements during the medieval period. While some, like Augustine and Aquinas, focused on integrating Christian thought with classical philosophy, others, such as Ockham and Abelard, contributed to the development of scholasticism and the methods of inquiry that would influence later scientific and philosophical thought. Together, these philosophers laid the foundation for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, leaving a lasting legacy in Western thought.