e revival." The main
center of this great intellectual movement was the University of
Paris, the mother of universities, which gained pre-eminence in the
great studies of theology and philosophy. It was chartered by Philip
Augustus in the thirteenth century, and was fostered by France,
Picardy, Normandy and England. These united and organized the Faculty
of Arts, which became its chief glory. It taught the three arts, Latin
grammar, rhetoric and dialectics, known as the _trivium_. The
_quadrivium_, embracing arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music, was
likewise taught. The Faculty of Theology was created in 1257, that of
Law in 1271, and that of Medicine in 1274.
Matthew Arnold says that "the University of Paris was the main center
of mediaeval science, and the authoritative school of mediaeval
teaching. It received names expressing the most enthusiastic devotion,
the _Fountain of Knowledge_, the _Tree of Life_, the _Candlestick of
the House of the Lord_. * * * Here came Roger Bacon, Saint Thomas
Aquinas and Dante; here studied the founder of the first university of
the empire, Charles the Fourth, Emperor of Germany and King of
Bohemia, founder of the University of Prague."
The intellectual lead which belonged to France in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries passed to Italy in the fourteenth century. Some
of the universities in Italy ranked among the best in Europe. They
were chiefly distinguished for their studies in law and medicine. In
the early part of the thirteenth century, the University of Bologna
was famous throughout the world, having at one time 12,000 students
from all parts of Europe. These universities continued to exert a
powerful influence until Catholicism triumphed over the abortive
attempts at religious reform, and there settled down over the
brilliant Italy of the Renaissance an unprogressive and
anti-intellectual influence from which she has never fully recovered.
"The importance of the university in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries," says Matthew Arnold, "was extraordinary. Men's minds were
possessed with a wonderful zeal for knowledge, or what was then
thought knowledge, and the University of Paris was the great fount
from which this knowledge issued. The University and those depending
on it, made at this time, it is said, actually a third of the
population of Paris. * * * One asks oneself with interest, what was
the mental food to which this vast, turbulent multitude pressed with
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