what would now be called idealists,
whereas their opponents, denying the reality of abstractions and
insisting on that of the concrete individual or object, were
realists in the modern sense.

The peculiar importance of this controversy lay in its effect on
the status of the Church. If nominalism should prevail, then the
Church would be shorn of much of its authority, for its greatest
power lay in the conception of it as an enduring reality outside of
and above all the individuals who shared in its work. It is not
strange, then, that the ardent realism of William of Champeaux
should have been outraged by the nominalistic logic of Abelard.
Abelard, indeed, never went to such extreme lengths as the
arch-nominalist, Roscellinus, who was duly condemned for heresy by
the Council of Soissons in 1092, but he went quite far enough to
win for himself the undying enmity of the leading realists, who
were followed by the great majority of the clergy.

PORPHYRY

The Introduction ("Isagoge") to the Categories of Aristotle,
Written by the Greek scholar and neoplatonist Porphyry in the third
century A.D., was translated into Latin by Boetius, and in this
form was extensively used throughout the Middle Ages as a
compendium of Aristotelian logic. As a philosopher Porphyry was
chiefly important as the immediate successor of Plotinus in the
neoplatonic school at Rome, but his "Isagoge" had extraordinary
weight among the medieval logicians.

PRISCIAN

The _Institutiones grammaticae_ of Priscian (Priscianus
Caesariensis) formed the standard grammatical and philological
textbook of the Middle Ages, its importance being fairly indicated
by the fact that today there exist about a thousand manuscript
copies of it.

ANSELM

Anselm of Laon was born somewhere about 1040, and is said to have
studied under the famous St. Anselm, later archbishop of
Canterbury, at the monastery of Bec. About 1070 he began to teach
in Paris, where he was notably successful. Subsequently he returned
to Laon, where his school of theology and exegetics became the most
famous one in Europe. His most important work, an interlinear gloss
on the Scriptures, was regarded as authoritative throughout the
later Middle Ages. He died in 1117. That he was something of a
pedant is probable, but Abelard's picture of him is certainly very
far from doing him justice.

ALBERIC OF RHEIMS AND LOTULPHE THE LOMBARD

Of these two not much is known beyond what Abelard hi