Skills

Over the past four weeks you have studied all seven sacraments. Today, briefly bring them together. The seven sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ, by which divine life is given to us. They fall into three groups: the sacraments of INITIATION (Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist), which lay the foundations of Christian life; the sacraments of HEALING (Penance and the Anointing of the Sick), which restore us when wounded by sin or sickness; and the sacraments at the SERVICE OF COMMUNION (Holy Orders and Matrimony), which build up the whole Church. Together they accompany the Christian through every season of life. Begin today with a short prayer of thanksgiving for the sacraments — especially, in this Advent season, for the Eucharist, in which the Christ we await is already truly present.

This is the capstone of your clause study. Now that you can spot independent and dependent clauses, you can classify any sentence by its structure — and using a variety of structures is the secret to mature, graceful writing. There are four types. A SIMPLE sentence has exactly one independent clause and no dependent clauses: 'Aquinas studied Aristotle.' A COMPOUND sentence has two or more independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet) or a semicolon, but no dependent clause: 'Aquinas studied Aristotle, and Dante read the philosophers.' A COMPLEX sentence has one independent clause and at least one dependent clause: 'Because Aquinas loved truth, he studied Aristotle.' (Dependent: 'Because Aquinas loved truth'; Independent: 'he studied Aristotle.') A COMPOUND-COMPLEX sentence has two or more independent clauses AND at least one dependent clause: 'Because Aquinas loved truth, he studied Aristotle, and Dante wove that learning into poetry.' (One dependent clause + two independent clauses.) Notice the building blocks: count the independent clauses (1 = simple/complex; 2+ = compound/compound-complex) and check for dependent clauses (none = simple/compound; one or more = complex/compound-complex). Good writers mix all four so their prose never sounds monotonous — exactly the variety your writing assignment asks for this week.

Today's map traces the geography of the medieval mind: where the great universities arose. By the 1200s and 1300s, a network of universities stretched across Europe, each often famous for a particular subject. Bologna in northern Italy (founded c. 1088) was the oldest and the great center of LAW. Paris (c. 1150) was the queen of THEOLOGY — where Aquinas himself taught — and the model for many others. Oxford (c. 1096–1167) and later Cambridge anchored learning in England. Salamanca (1218) became the leading university of Spain. Others followed across the continent. Notice the pattern: universities clustered where towns were prosperous and where the Church was strong, often near cathedrals — for the Church both founded and protected these centers of learning. Students were remarkably mobile, traveling across borders to study under famous masters; a scholar might study in Bologna, teach in Paris, and end his days at Oxford, all in the shared scholarly language of Latin. This created a genuinely international 'republic of letters' bound together by faith and learning. Mapping these centers shows that the high Middle Ages were not a 'dark age' of ignorance but a brilliant age of inquiry, its great minds linked across Europe like cities on a single map of knowledge.

You have completed the grammar arc of the autumn term — from parts of speech all the way to the four sentence structures — and mapped the centers of medieval learning. A quick check seals it before the writing work.