Most Famous Medieval Philosophers

Medieval philosophy denotes the philosophical tradition of Western Europe and the Mediterranean from roughly the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century to the Renaissance in the fifteenth. The period was dominated by the encounter between classical Greek philosophy, especially Plato and Aristotle, and the three Abrahamic religions, with major contributions in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish traditions. Central concerns included the relation of faith and reason, the existence and nature of God, universals, and the foundations of ethics and political authority. Major figures include Augustine, Boethius, Avicenna, Maimonides, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. The scholastic method developed in this period shaped university education for centuries.

Philosophers in this tradition

Augustine of Hippo 354 – 430 · Roman
Augustine of Hippo was a Roman-African theologian and philosopher whose work shaped Western Christianity and Latin philosophy for the next millennium. His Confessions, addressed...
Rumi 1207 – 1273 · Persian
Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi was a thirteenth-century Persian poet, jurist, and Sufi mystic, born in what is now Afghanistan and settling at Konya in Anatolia. After his transform...
Julian of Norwich 1343 – 1416 · English
Julian of Norwich was an English anchoress and the author of the Revelations of Divine Love, the first surviving book in English written by a woman. At thirty she received a ser...
Boethius c. 480 – 524 · Roman
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was a 5th and 6th-century Roman senator, consul, and philosopher, one of the last representatives of classical learning in the Latin West and ...
Nicholas of Cusa 1401 – 1464 · German
Nicholas of Cusa was a German cardinal, philosopher, and mathematician at the threshold between the medieval and Renaissance worlds. His treatise On Learned Ignorance argued tha...
Ibn Hazm 994 – 1064 · Andalusian
Abu Muhammad Ali Ibn Hazm was an Andalusian polymath, jurist, theologian, philosopher, and poet, one of the foremost minds of medieval Islamic Spain. He served briefly as vizier...
Bernard of Clairvaux 1090 – 1153 · French
Bernard of Clairvaux was a French Cistercian abbot, mystical theologian, and one of the most influential figures of the twelfth century. As founder of the abbey of Clairvaux and...
Meister Eckhart 1260 – 1328 · German
Meister Eckhart was a German Dominican theologian, philosopher, and mystic. Trained in scholastic theology and twice the regent master at Paris, he is best known for his vernacu...
Averroes 1126 – 1198 · Andalusian
Averroes, known in Arabic as Ibn Rushd, was a 12th-century Andalusian Arab philosopher, jurist, and physician of the Islamic Golden Age, the most influential medieval commentato...
Isidore of Seville c. 560 – 636 · Spanish
Isidore of Seville was a Spanish bishop, encyclopedist, and the last of the Latin Fathers of the Church. Presiding over Visigothic Spain during the long transition from late ant...
Peter Abelard 1079 – 1142 · French
Peter Abelard was a French philosopher, logician, and theologian and one of the most original thinkers of the twelfth century. He made decisive contributions to the problem of u...
Al-Ghazali 1058 – 1111 · Persian
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali was an 11th and early 12th-century Persian Sunni Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and Sufi mystic, regarded as one of the most influential thinkers i...
Thomas Aquinas 1225 – 1274 · Italian
Thomas Aquinas was a 13th-century Italian Dominican friar and philosopher, the most influential figure of medieval scholasticism. His Summa Theologica, left unfinished at his de...
Al-Biruni 973 – 1048 · Persian
Abu Rayhan al-Biruni was a Persian polymath of the Islamic Golden Age, often counted among the greatest scientific minds in the history of the medieval world. He worked extensiv...
Bonaventure 1221 – 1274 · Italian
Bonaventure was a 13th-century Italian Franciscan friar, theologian, philosopher, and Cardinal, regarded as one of the most important medieval Christian thinkers alongside his c...
Cassiodorus c. 485 – c. 585 · Roman
Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator was a Roman senator, scholar, and statesman who served the Ostrogothic kings of Italy under Theodoric and his successors before retir...
Ibn Taymiyyah 1263 – 1328 · Arab
Taqi al-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah was a Sunni Muslim theologian, jurist, and reformer of Mamluk-era Syria and one of the most controversial and influential thinkers of medieval Is...
Isaac Israeli c. 855 – c. 955 · Egyptian-Jewish
Isaac ben Solomon Israeli was an Egyptian-born Jewish physician and philosopher, often counted as the first medieval Jewish Neoplatonist. He served as court physician to the ear...
Robert Grosseteste c. 1175 – 1253 · English
Robert Grosseteste was an English statesman, scholastic philosopher, theologian, and bishop of Lincoln. He served as the first chancellor of the University of Oxford and as the ...
Roger Bacon 1219 – 1292 · English
Roger Bacon was an English Franciscan friar, philosopher, and early advocate of experimental method, sometimes called Doctor Mirabilis. Trained at Oxford and Paris, he produced ...
William of Ockham 1287 – 1347 · English
William of Ockham was an English Franciscan friar, philosopher, and theologian, one of the most important figures of late medieval thought. He defended a thoroughgoing nominalis...
Gabriel Biel c. 1420 – 1495 · German
Gabriel Biel was a German scholastic philosopher and theologian, sometimes called the last of the great medieval nominalists. After studies at Heidelberg, Erfurt, and Cologne an...
Henry of Ghent c. 1217 – 1293 · Flemish
Henry of Ghent was a Flemish secular master of theology at Paris in the late thirteenth century and one of the most influential scholastics of the generation between Aquinas and...
Hugh of Saint Victor c. 1096 – 1141 · German-French
Hugh of Saint Victor was a German-born theologian and philosopher who taught at the abbey of Saint Victor in Paris and shaped the intellectual and contemplative life of the Vict...
Ibn Khaldun 1332 – 1406 · Tunisian
Ibn Khaldun was a North African Arab historian and philosopher, born in Tunis to a family of Andalusian scholars. His Muqaddimah, the prolegomenon to a vast universal history, l...
John of Salisbury c. 1110 – 1180 · English
John of Salisbury was an English humanist scholar, secretary to two archbishops of Canterbury including the martyred Thomas Becket, and finally bishop of Chartres. After studies...
Maimonides 1138 – 1204 · Sephardic Jewish
Moses ben Maimon, known to the Latin West as Maimonides and to Jewish tradition by the acronym Rambam, was a medieval Sephardic Jewish philosopher, physician, and Torah scholar ...
Nicholas Oresme c. 1320 – 1382 · French
Nicholas Oresme was a French scholastic philosopher, mathematician, economist, theologian, and bishop of Lisieux, and one of the most original thinkers of the fourteenth century...
Peter Damian 1007 – 1072 · Italian
Peter Damian was an Italian Benedictine reformer, cardinal-bishop of Ostia, and one of the most vigorous voices of the eleventh-century reform of the Latin Church. After early s...
Alexander of Hales c. 1185 – 1245 · English
Alexander of Hales was an English Franciscan theologian and the first holder of the Franciscan chair of theology at the University of Paris. After training in the arts and theol...
Anselm of Canterbury 1033 – 1109 · Italian
Anselm of Canterbury was an 11th and early 12th-century Italian-Norman Benedictine monk, philosopher, and theologian, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. H...
Bede c. 672 – 735 · English
Bede, called the Venerable, was an English Benedictine monk, scholar, and the most learned writer of the early medieval West. From the age of seven he lived at the joint monaste...
Christine de Pizan 1364 – 1430 · Italian-French
Christine de Pizan was a 14th and 15th-century Italian-French author and one of the earliest professional women writers in European history. Widowed in her mid-twenties, she sup...
Hildegard of Bingen 1098 – 1179 · German
Hildegard of Bingen was a German Benedictine abbess, polymath, and one of the most important religious figures of the twelfth century. From the age of three she experienced visi...
Johannes Tauler c. 1300 – 1361 · German
Johannes Tauler was a German Dominican preacher and mystic and one of the principal figures of the Rhineland mystical tradition along with Meister Eckhart and Henry Suso. After ...
John Pecham c. 1230 – 1292 · English
John Pecham was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic theologian, and natural philosopher, and from 1279 archbishop of Canterbury. After studies at Paris and Oxford and a long...
John Scotus Eriugena 815 – 877 · Irish
John Scotus Eriugena was an Irish theologian and Neoplatonist philosopher active at the court of the Carolingian king Charles the Bald. He produced the first Latin translation o...
Al-Hallaj 858 – 922 · Persian
Mansur al-Hallaj was a Persian Sufi mystic, preacher, and poet whose ecstatic utterances and public life made him one of the most controversial and revered figures of early Sufi...
Al-Mawardi 972 – 1058 · Arab
Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Muhammad al-Mawardi was an Arab Islamic jurist of the Shafi'i school and the principal classical theorist of Sunni political thought. Born in Basra and trai...
Avicenna 980 – 1037 · Persian
Avicenna, known in Arabic and Persian as Ibn Sina, was a Persian polymath of the Islamic Golden Age, regarded as one of the most influential philosophers and physicians of the m...
Henry Suso c. 1295 – 1366 · German
Heinrich Seuse, known in English as Henry Suso, was a German Dominican mystic, preacher, and spiritual director and one of the principal figures of the Rhineland mystical tradit...
Judah Halevi c. 1075 – 1141 · Andalusian-Jewish
Judah Halevi was a Spanish Jewish philosopher, poet, and physician who lived in the Christian and Muslim courts of medieval Iberia. His philosophical dialogue The Kuzari, conduc...
Al-Ashari 874 – 936 · Arab
Abu al-Hasan Ali al-Ashari was an Arab Sunni theologian and the founder of the Ashari school of kalam, the dominant theological tradition of medieval Sunni Islam. After early ad...
Alcuin of York c. 735 – 804 · English
Alcuin of York was an English Anglo-Saxon scholar, deacon, poet, and the principal intellectual adviser of the emperor Charlemagne. After many years as master of the cathedral s...
Catherine of Siena 1347 – 1380 · Italian
Catherine of Siena was an Italian Dominican tertiary, mystic, and political activist whose influence on the fourteenth-century Church was extraordinary for a woman of her time. ...
Heloise c. 1100 – 1164 · French
Heloise of Argenteuil was a 12th-century French nun, abbess, and philosopher, one of the most learned women of medieval Europe and an important early voice in the medieval Latin...
Ibn Arabi 1165 – 1240 · Andalusian
Muhyi al-Din Ibn Arabi was an Andalusian Sufi philosopher, mystic, and poet, often called the Greatest Master. Born in Murcia, he traveled extensively through North Africa and t...
Joseph Albo c. 1380 – 1444 · Spanish-Jewish
Joseph Albo was a Spanish Jewish philosopher and the author of the Sefer ha-Ikkarim, the Book of Principles, the most widely read Jewish philosophical work in Iberia in the gene...
Adelard of Bath c. 1080 – c. 1152 · English
Adelard of Bath was an English natural philosopher, mathematician, and translator and one of the principal channels by which Greek and Arabic scientific learning reached the Lat...
Ibn al-Haytham 965 – 1040 · Arab
Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, known to the Latin West as Alhazen, was an Arab mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher and one of the greatest scientific minds of the medie...
Al-Razi 854 – 925 · Persian
Abu Bakr al-Razi, known to the Latin West as Rhazes, was a Persian polymath, physician, alchemist, and philosopher, and one of the most original minds of the Islamic Golden Age....
Duns Scotus c. 1266 – 1308 · Scottish
John Duns Scotus was a 13th and early 14th-century Scottish Franciscan friar, philosopher, and theologian, regarded as one of the most important medieval scholastic philosophers...
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi 1149 – 1209 · Persian
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi was a Persian Sunni theologian, philosopher, and exegete of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries and one of the most prolific Islamic intellectua...
John Wyclif c. 1320 – 1384 · English
John Wyclif was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, and reformer, often called the morning star of the Reformation. Master of Balliol College and a doctor of theology...
Ramon Llull 1232 – 1316 · Catalan
Ramon Llull was a Catalan philosopher, theologian, mystic, and missionary, the first major author to write philosophical and literary works in the vernacular Catalan. After a wo...
Al-Kindi 801 – 873 · Arab
Abu Yusuf al-Kindi was an Arab philosopher, mathematician, and polymath, often called the father of Arab philosophy. Working at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad under the Abbasid ...
Bernard of Chartres c. 1080 – c. 1130 · French
Bernard of Chartres was a French Latin Platonist of the early twelfth century, master and chancellor of the cathedral school of Chartres, and one of the most influential teacher...
Ibn Bajja c. 1085 – 1138 · Andalusian
Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Yahya Ibn Bajja, known to the Latin West as Avempace, was an Andalusian polymath, the first major Islamic philosopher of the Iberian peninsula after Ibn Ha...
Peter Lombard c. 1096 – 1160 · Italian
Peter Lombard, known as the Master of the Sentences, was an Italian theologian and bishop of Paris, and the author of the most influential textbook of medieval scholastic theolo...
Solomon ibn Gabirol c. 1021 – c. 1058 · Andalusian-Jewish
Solomon ibn Gabirol was an Andalusian Jewish philosopher and Hebrew poet. His philosophical treatise, the Fountain of Life, written in Arabic, developed an emanationist Neoplato...
Al-Farabi 872 – 950 · Persian
Abu Nasr al-Farabi was a Persian philosopher and one of the greatest figures of the Islamic Golden Age, known to later tradition as the Second Teacher, after Aristotle. He produ...
Pope Gregory the Great 540 AD – 604 AD · Roman
Gregory the Great was a Roman pope, theologian, and one of the four Latin Doctors of the Church. After service as prefect of Rome and as papal envoy to Constantinople, he was el...
Jean Gerson 1363 – 1429 · French
Jean Charlier de Gerson was a French theologian, mystic, and chancellor of the University of Paris and one of the leading figures of the late medieval conciliar movement. He pla...
Joachim of Fiore c. 1135 – 1202 · Italian
Joachim of Fiore was an Italian Cistercian abbot, biblical exegete, and one of the most influential apocalyptic thinkers of the Middle Ages. After a pilgrimage to the Holy Land ...
Mechthild of Magdeburg c. 1207 – c. 1282 · German
Mechthild of Magdeburg was a German beguine and Christian mystic and the author of The Flowing Light of the Godhead, the first major work of mystical theology written in Middle ...
Thomas Bradwardine c. 1300 – 1349 · English
Thomas Bradwardine was an English theologian, mathematician, and Archbishop of Canterbury, known to scholastic posterity as the Doctor Profundus. As one of the Oxford Calculator...
Aelred of Rievaulx 1110 – 1167 · English
Aelred of Rievaulx was an English Cistercian abbot, theologian, and one of the most beloved spiritual writers of the twelfth century. After service at the Scottish royal court, ...
Al-Junayd of Baghdad c. 830 – 910 · Persian
Abu al-Qasim al-Junayd of Baghdad was a Persian Sunni Muslim mystic and theologian and the principal founder of the school of sober Sufism that traces its lineage through him. T...
Alan of Lille c. 1128 – 1202 · French
Alan of Lille was a French Cistercian theologian, preacher, and Latin poet of the twelfth-century renaissance, known to medieval readers as Doctor Universalis for the breadth of...
Avraham ibn Daud c. 1110 – c. 1180 · Andalusian-Jewish
Avraham ibn Daud was a Spanish Jewish philosopher, physician, astronomer, and historian of the twelfth century, often counted as the first systematic Jewish Aristotelian. After ...
Bahya ibn Paquda c. 1050 – c. 1120 · Andalusian-Jewish
Bahya ibn Paquda was an Andalusian Jewish philosopher and rabbinic judge whose Duties of the Heart, written in Judeo-Arabic in the late eleventh century, became the first major ...
Berengar of Tours c. 999 – 1088 · French
Berengar of Tours was a French theologian, philosopher, and grammarian of the eleventh century, master of the cathedral school of Tours, and the principal early-medieval defende...
Bernard Silvestris c. 1085 – c. 1178 · French
Bernard Silvestris was a Latin Platonist philosopher and poet of the twelfth-century Renaissance, master at the cathedral school of Tours, and one of the central figures of the ...
Boethius of Dacia c. 1240 – c. 1284 · Danish
Boethius of Dacia was a Latin philosopher and master of arts at the University of Paris, one of the leading exponents of the Latin Averroist school of the Faculty of Arts in the...
Gersonides 1288 – 1344 · French-Jewish
Levi ben Gershon, known by the Latinized name Gersonides, was a fourteenth-century Jewish philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, and biblical exegete who lived in Provence. His...
Gilbert of Poitiers c. 1085 – 1154 · French
Gilbert of Poitiers, also known as Gilbert de la Porree, was a French scholastic theologian and bishop of Poitiers and one of the most acute minds of the twelfth-century renaiss...
Hasdai Crescas c. 1340 – 1410 · Spanish-Jewish
Hasdai ben Abraham Crescas was a Spanish Jewish philosopher and rabbinic leader of the late fourteenth century. After the catastrophes of 1391, in which his only son was killed ...
Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim c. 935 – c. 1002 · Saxon
Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim was a tenth-century Saxon canoness, poet, and philosopher in the imperial abbey of Gandersheim, the first known dramatist of the post-classical Latin W...
Ibn Tufayl 1105 – 1185 · Andalusian
Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Tufayl was an Andalusian philosopher, physician, and statesman, court physician to the Almohad caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf and a patron of the young Averroes. H...
Isaac Abravanel 1437 – 1508 · Portuguese-Jewish
Don Isaac ben Judah Abravanel was a Portuguese Jewish philosopher, biblical exegete, and statesman whose life spanned the upheavals of the Iberian Jewish communities at the end ...
Jean Buridan c. 1300 – c. 1361 · French
Jean Buridan was a French priest and one of the most important philosophers of the late Middle Ages, who spent his entire career in the secular arts faculty at Paris rather than...
Marguerite Porete c. 1250 – 1310 · French
Marguerite Porete was a French Christian mystic, beguine, and the author of the Mirror of Simple Souls, one of the most daring works of medieval mystical theology. The book, wri...
Marsilius of Padua 1275 – 1342 · Italian
Marsilius of Padua was an Italian political philosopher and physician, one of the most original thinkers of the late Middle Ages. His Defensor Pacis, completed in 1324, construc...
Miskawayh 932 – 1030 · Persian
Ahmad ibn Muhammad Miskawayh was a Persian Islamic philosopher, historian, and bureaucrat at the Buyid court in Baghdad, and the most important Islamic moral philosopher between...
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi 1201 – 1274 · Persian
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was a Persian polymath, philosopher, and astronomer who served first the Ismaili Nizari rulers of Alamut and then, after the Mongol conquest, the Ilkhanid c...
Nicholas of Autrecourt c. 1299 – c. 1369 · French
Nicholas of Autrecourt was a French scholastic philosopher of the early fourteenth century, sometimes called the medieval Hume for the radical skeptical critique of Aristotelian...
Petrus Olivi 1248 – 1298 · French
Petrus Iohannis Olivi was a French Franciscan philosopher and theologian of the late thirteenth century, the most original and controversial Spiritual Franciscan of his generati...
Pierre d'Ailly 1351 – 1420 · French
Pierre d'Ailly was a French scholastic theologian, cardinal, and statesman of the Church and one of the leading figures of the conciliarist movement that resolved the Western Sc...
Richard of Saint Victor c. 1110 – 1173 · Scottish-French
Richard of Saint Victor was a Scottish-born Latin theologian and philosopher of the twelfth century, prior of the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris and one of the most influential ...
Robert Kilwardby c. 1215 – 1279 · English
Robert Kilwardby was an English Dominican philosopher, archbishop of Canterbury from 1273 to 1278, and finally a cardinal of the Roman Church. After teaching the arts at Paris a...
Saadia Gaon 882 – 942 · Egyptian-Jewish
Saadia ben Joseph al-Fayyumi, known as Saadia Gaon, was an Egyptian-born Jewish philosopher, exegete, and head of the Babylonian academy of Sura. He produced the first systemati...
Siger of Brabant c. 1240 – c. 1284 · Brabantian
Siger of Brabant was a master of arts at the University of Paris and the leading exponent of Latin Averroism in the thirteenth century. Drawing on the commentaries of Averroes, ...
Suhrawardi 1154 – 1191 · Persian
Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi was a Persian philosopher and the founder of the Illuminationist school of Islamic philosophy. Drawing on Avicennan philosophy, ancient Persian wisdom, ...
Walter Burley c. 1275 – c. 1344 · English
Walter Burley was an English scholastic philosopher and logician, fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and a leading representative of the realist tradition that stood against the ...
William of Auvergne c. 1180 – 1249 · French
William of Auvergne was a French scholastic theologian and bishop of Paris from 1228 until his death in 1249, and one of the first major Latin Christian thinkers to engage serio...
William of Conches c. 1090 – c. 1154 · French
William of Conches was a French scholastic philosopher and grammarian and one of the leading lights of the School of Chartres in the twelfth-century renaissance. He taught gramm...
Albert the Great c. 1200 – 1280 · German
Albertus Magnus, known in English as Albert the Great, was a 13th-century German Dominican friar, theologian, philosopher, and natural scientist, regarded as one of the greatest...