The Council of Vienne’s Arabic chairs were never actually established.
Evidence
The campaigning of Lull and others, including the famous philosopher and scientist Roger Bacon, persuaded the Church Council of Vienne (1311–12) to decree that chairs of Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic should be established at the universities of Avignon, Paris, Oxford, Bologna and Salamanca. The proponents of the measure urged that the teaching of Oriental languages should serve the twofold purpose of assisting in the conversion of the infidel and advancing biblical exegesis. The chairs of Greek and Hebrew fluttered in and out of existence at some of the universities, but no chair in Arabic was established anywhere. The teaching of Arabic was supposed to be funded by extra ecclesiastical funding and it never happened. The Council of Basel (1341) attempted to revive the decree, but to no purpose at all. Edward Said has stated that the Council of Vienne marked the beginning of Orientalism’s formal existence. In fact, as far as the study and teaching of Arabic was concerned, its decree was a dead letter. Rather, as Southern noted, it was ‘the last salute to a dying ideal’. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 95
Categorization
- XREF: Directly counters Edward Said’s account in Orientalism, which treats Vienne as the founding moment of institutional Orientalism — a useful corrective in my own thinking about the Saidian origin narrative.