opening of the twelfth century is thus described by a modern writer:

The scholastic fever, which was soon to inflame the youth of the
whole of Europe, had already set in. You could not travel far
over the rough roads of France without meeting some footsore
scholar, making for the nearest large monastery or cathedral
town. Before many years, it is true, there arose an elaborate
system of conveyance from town to town, an organization of
messengers to run between the chateau and the school; but in the
earlier days, and, to some extent, even later, the scholar
wandered afoot through the long provinces of France. 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.

3. Between the latter part of the twelfth c