Robbers,
frequently in the service of the lord of the land, infested every
province. It was safest to don the coarse frieze tunic of the
pilgrim, without pockets, sling your little wax tablets and
stylus at your girdle, strap a wallet of bread and herbs and salt
on your back, and laugh at the nervous folk who peeped out from
their coaches over a hedge of pikes and daggers. Few monasteries
refused a meal or a rough bed to the wandering scholar. Rarely
was any fee exacted for the lesson given. For the rest, none were
too proud to earn a few sous by sweeping, or drawing water, or
amusing with a tune on the reed-flute; or to wear the cast-off
tunics of their masters.[1]
This account refers to the study of logic and theology, which soon
became dominant in Paris and in various cathedral schools in other parts
of France. With slight modifications it would describe also the revival
of interest in Roman law in Italy, especially at Bologna.
2. The revival was concerned mainly with professional, or--as later
appeared--university, education. The prevailing interest was in Law,
Medicine, Theology, and the philosophy of Aristotle. Schools of lower
grade were much influenced by the intellectual activity of the times,
but the characteristic product of this movement was the university. The
universities, organized as corporations, with their teachers divided
into faculties, their definite courses of study, their examinations,
their degrees, their privileges, and their cosmopolitan communities of
students, were not only the result of the revival, but they were
institutions essentially new in the history of education, and the models
for all universities which have since been established.
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