ed to bear the burdens of sinners.
Therefore priests must endeavor to cast off ignorance from them
as if it were a sort of pestilence. For although, in a few
instances, it is said that a slave is flogged who does not do his
master's will through ignorance of that will, this is not,
generally understood of all. For the Apostle says: "If any man be
ignorant, let him be ignorant," which is to be understood as
referring to him who did not wish to have knowledge that he might
do well.

Hence Augustine in his book of Questions:

Not every man who is ignorant is free from the penalty. For the
ignorant man who is ignorant because he found no way of learning
(the law) can be excused from the penalty, while he cannot be
pardoned who having the means of knowledge did not use them.[31]

(d) _Theology_

As above noted, one of the two great contributions of the
twelfth-century revival of learning to the field of university studies
was scholastic theology. The number of books written on this subject was
enormous. The ponderous tomes, loaded with comments, make a long array
on the shelves of our great libraries, but they are memorials of a
battlefield of the mind now for the most part deserted. The importance
of the subject in the scheme of mediaeval education has been much
exaggerated; it was the pursuit of a very small minority of students. It
has a certain interest to the historian of education, however, as an
illustration of the way in which a method struck out by a single
original thinker may influence the work of scholars and universities for
generations. The method of scholastic theology is mainly due to Abelard.

The roots of the nobly developed systems of the thirteenth
century theology lie in the twelfth century; and all Sums of
Theology, of which there was a considerable number, not only
before Alexander of Hales [thirteenth century] but also before
and at the time of Peter Lombard, may be traced back directly or
indirectly to Paris.[32]

In this mass of theological writings one book stands out as the
contribution which for three centuries most influenced university
instruction in theology. This is the "Sentences" _(Sententiae)_ of Peter
Lombard (c. 1100-1160), in four books. The subjects discussed in this
work are similar to those treated by Abelard in the _Sic et Non_ (see
p. 20). In not a few instances it adopts the f