d a goose quill and wrote down what seemed to be
important. One day it rained. The teacher and his pupils retired to an
empty basement or the room of the "Professor." The learned man sat in
his chair and the boys sat on the floor. That was the beginning of the
University, the "universitas," a corporation of professors and students
during the Middle Ages, when the "teacher" counted for everything and
the building in which he taught counted for very little.

As an example, let me tell you of something that happened in the ninth
century. In the town of Salerno near Naples there were a number of
excellent physicians. They attracted people desirous of learning the
medical profession and for almost a thousand years (until 1817) there
was a university of Salerno which taught the wisdom of Hippocrates, the
great Greek doctor who had practiced his art in ancient Hellas in the
fifth century before the birth of Christ.

Then there was Abelard, the young priest from Brittany, who early in
the twelfth century began to lecture on theology and logic in Paris.
Thousands of eager young men flocked to the French city to hear him.
Other priests who disagreed with him stepped forward to explain their
point of view. Paris was soon filled with a clamouring multitude of
Englishmen and Germans and Italians and students from Sweden and Hungary
and around the old cathedral which stood on a little island in the Seine
there grew the famous University of Paris. In Bologna in Italy, a monk
by the name of Gratian had compiled a text-book for those whose business
it was to know the laws of the church. Young priests and many laymen
then came from all over Europe to hear Gratian explain his ideas. To
protect themselves against the landlords and the innkeepers and the
boarding-house ladies of the city, they formed a corporation (or
University) and behold the beginning of the university of Bologna.

Next there was a quarrel in the University of Paris. We do not know
what caused it, but a number of disgruntled teachers together with
their pupils crossed the channel and found a hospitable home in a
little village on the Thames called Oxford, and in this way the famous
University of Oxford came into being. In the same way, in the year 1222,
there had been a split in the University of Bologna. The discontented
teachers (again followed by their pupils) had moved to Padua and their
proud city thenceforward boasted of a university of its own. And so
it went fr