Byzantine and medieval university : a sociological approach to covering the gap in Bernsteinian analysis

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Koustourakis, Gerasimos

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Research in Sociology of Education

Abstract

In this paper, an attempt is made to conduct a sociological analysis of the institution of the byzantine university, which operated from the 5th century A.D. in Constantinople, in comparison with the medieval university, which Basil Bernstein approached. The discourse of the medieval university, which was an ideological mechanism of the Catholic Church, was based on a religious type principle for the building of knowledge. This was because teaching of the lessons of the Trivium was aimed at the shaping of the consciousness of medieval man regarding the understanding of the natural world based on the views of the Church of Rome. The research results revealed that the byzantine university was kept in check exclusively by state power and was founded on a Visible Pedagogy. The orientation of the discourse that concerns scientific knowledge and the objective of its educational role was based on a mundane principle aimed at the staffing of state bureaucracy and the institution of justice. In addition, the intellectual creation of the classical and Hellenistic years (such as Aristotelian reasoning and neo-platonic philosophy) was utilized for the shaping of byzantine scientific knowledge.

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Keywords

Byzantine university, Medieval university, Trivium, Quatrivium, Bernsteinian analysis, Sociology of education

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