And much of American utopianism must be understood in the light of the same movement in the West. We have, as far as I know, nothing equal – except in Christianity and perhaps Judaism – in the Eastern religions, because by definition they are non-historical religions. And here in this man a new insight into the dialectics of history appeared.

His influence was mediated by the radical Franciscan monks. I now come to the Franciscan theology, and this means, to the thirteenth century. Everything I said up to now belongs to the early Middle Ages. All these men – Abelard, Hugh of St.Victor, Anselm, Joachim, et al-, are of the 11th and 12th centuries. The 13th is the highest point of the Middle Ages, in which the whole destiny of the Western world was decided in a very definite way. I have not used one name, a man who also belongs to the 12th century, and on whom all Scholastics are partly dependent: Peter the Lombard (Petrus Lombardus.) He is not as original as the others, but he represents the systematic didactic type of the Middle Ages. He wrote four books of “sentences,” the sayings of the Fathers about theological problems – cf. in connection with Abelard. He organized the sayings of the Fathers into four books which became the textbook of the whole Middle Ages, if there ever was a textbook! Every great Scholastic started by writing a commentary on Lombard’s four books of sentences. In this sense it has become the classical schoolbook of Scholasticism.

The 13th century can be described theologically in three steps, represented by three names: Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus. But there are others between them and I will mention them occasionally.

Duns Scotus was, as scholar, the greatest of all, but he was also the point in which new developments started on which all of us are dependent in our modern world.