Rev? Lahey did an excellent job of answering this query with examples from
Aquinas. I will just add that my students find even Anselm's arguments on the
existence of God ("greater than which nothing else can be thought") baffling
enough, and I haven't had the courage to give them too many treatises making
distinctions between essence and being, etc. So I would guess that Latin-spouting
scholars would be baffling to medieval parishioners: the Latin, the language of
logic and philosophy, would be unknown, and most scholars would not be able (or
would be unwilling) to make their arguments in the vernacular.
Karen Jolly
History
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
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