Fides - Scientia - Sapienta. On the Seven Stages of Wisdom in Rabanus Maurus

Rabanus Maurus wrote his De institutione clericorum (On the education of the clerics) in 818 when he was a relatively young teacher in the abbey of Fulda. Chapter 4-5 of book III of the De institutione deal with the ascensional process up to the plenitude of Wisdom, which he identifies with the plenitude of Love. This article tries to analyze this ascensional process and each of its seven degrees in connection of other texts of the Carolingian renaissance, especially by Alcuin of York, or former texts perused in that time, and to deepen in the way concepts such as wisdom ( sapientia ), knowledge ( scientia ) and education ( eruditio ) were understood in then.