William J. Courtenay charts how the Faculty of Theology at the University of Paris took shape in the latter half of the twelfth century and developed into a leading intellectual authority in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Beginning with an examination of the origins and scope of the privileges that defined the Parisian scholarly community, this work traces how theology masters came to adjudicate questions of orthodoxy arising from the lectures and writings of arts masters, Bachelors of Theology, and works submitted to them for judgment, including those of Hildegard of Bingen and the Talmud. As the faculty's authority grew, its reputation became a resource in the political struggles of Philip the Fair in conflicts with Pope Boniface VIII and in the suppression of the Templars. The papal countermeasures to these royal interventions gave rise to benefice-supplication rolls - an institutional development that reshaped university finance in the fourteenth century.
