During the Middle Ages, quodlibeta were public disputations in which scholars debated questions "about anything" (de quolibet) posed by the audience.
Classes were suspended just before Christmas and Easter holidays so that the masters could hold public sessions taking questions from the audience.
About half of quodlibeta and a definite majority of questions and manuscripts are attributed to Dominican or Franciscan scholars.
[4] Some Dominicans produced responses to written quodlibeta, imitating the form in what Russell Friedman calls "anti-quodlibeta", usually in defence of Thomas Aquinas.
These writers include Robert of Orford, Thomas of Sutton, Bernard of Auvergne and Hervaeus Natalis.