Abstract

Jean Buridan has sometimes been mentioned as an example of a highly successful teaching career, not simply in terms of reputation and honor but in material rewards as well1. This is all the more remarkable because his academic career was solely within the faculty of arts at Paris as a teacher of logic, natural philosophy, and ethics. Access to substantial ecclesiastical income was usually reserved for masters in the higher faculties of theology, canon law, and medicine, the latter two disciplines also allowing additional outside income through private practice. If Buridan's income in later years was as large as has been suggested, it is important testimony to the material importance of philosophy in fourteenth-century universities, at least for its most noted practitioners.