Humanism and Scholasticism in Sixteenth-Century Academe: Five Student Orations from the University of Salamanca*

Abstract

A collection of student orations by the Salamancan jurist Diego de Covarrubias, edited here in the appendix, offers a glimpse of the mental landscape of canon and civil lawyers in this era. The orations combine traditional scholastic forms of argumentation with humanistic themes, most prominently that of “arms and letters”. The article sets the orations in their intellectual and institutional context, and traces the intellectual lineages for this central topos. Although Covarrubias was conversant with the humanist literary tradition, in which “arms and letters” stood for twin achievements of a well-rounded courtier, the main point of these exercises was to assert, following Bartolus, that the legal profession rightfully deserved to inherit the honor and privileges bestowed in ancient times upon men of arms.