Abstract

The decades which go from Peter Lombard’s death to the mid of the thirteenth century represent a key period for the building and the development of the Parisian university milieu. The masters who thought in the city defined the basis of the theological culture inherited by the great Scholastic authors such as Bonaventure, Albert the Great and Aquinas, but they also contribute to the development of the teaching practices through which the theological doctrines were analysed and discussed. All along the twentieth century several studies have been devoted to this period, focusing on the writings and doctrines of the masters between 1160 and 1250, but a great amount of texts remains still unpublished and unstudied. This contribution aims to offer a survey of the researches dedicated, since the early twentieth century, to the texts and doctrines of the Parisian masters between the last decades of the twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth centuries. Considering the different historiographical trends and methodologies, the article tries to establish the basis for some considerations and remarks on the kind of research approach which will be developed to deal with these texts and authors and their role in the development of the European culture in late Middle Ages.