udied was the street of the Masters of the Arts. Every house in it
was a hostel for scholars or a school. It was in the Rue du Fouarre
that Pantagruel "held dispute against all the regents, professors of
arts and orators and did so gallantly that he overthrew them all and
set them all upon their tails." The street still exists, though wholly
modernised, opposite the foot of the Petit Pont. Its name has been
derived from the straw spread on the floor of the schools or on which
the students sat, but there is little doubt that Benvenuto da
Imola's[72] explanation, that it was so named from a hay and straw
market held there, is the correct one.

[Footnote 72: Benvenuto was certainly in France and possibly in Paris
during the fourteenth century. At any rate he would be familiar with
Parisian students, many of whom were Italians.]

The wonderful thirteenth century saw the meridian glory of the
university. It was the age of the great Aristotelian schoolmen who all
taught at Paris--Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and
Roger Bacon, their candid critic, who carried the intellectual
curiosity of the age beyond the tolerance of his Franciscan superiors
and twice suffered disciplinary measures at Paris.

In the fourteenth century the university of Paris was as renowned as
ever. Among many tributes from great scholars we choose that of
Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham, who in his _Philobiblon_ writes: "O
Holy God of gods in Zion, what a mighty stream of joy made glad our
hearts whenever we had leisure to visit Paris, the Paradise of the
world, and to linger there; where the days seemed ever few for the
greatness of our love! There are delightful libraries more aromatic
than stores of spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manners of
volumes; there are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars;
there are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of
Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of
all arts and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most
excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary
world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the
nodes of the planets by figures and numbers; there Paul reveals the
mysteries; there his neighbour Dionysius arranges and distinguishes
the hierarchies; there the virgin Carmentis reproduces in Latin
characters all that Cadmus collected in Phoenician letters; there
indeed opening our tre