William of Champeaux

Abstract

William of Champeaux (d. 1122) is best known as the leading master of dialectic (which included logic, grammar, and rhetoric) at Notre Dame when his more famous student, Peter Abelard, came there to study. William allegedly stopped teaching at that centre around 1108, shortly after his realist defenses on the controversial topic of the status of universals were attacked by Abelard, and he took up as a canon regular at the monastery at Saint Victor (Abelard, Historia calamitatum, ed. Monfrin J. Vrin, Paris, 1967); there is no historical evidence to support the oft-repeated claim that William founded that famous monastery and school, his name is not found among the writings of the Victorines, ..