In the middle ages 43

masters. Thus, the Emperor Otto III wrote a let-

ter to the famous Gerbert, professor in Rheims and

who later became Pope Sylvester II, in which he

said: "We heartily desire your presence here, dis-

tinguished man, that you may relieve me of my

Saxon rusticity, Saoconica rusticitas."^ Otto was

successful in creating an interesting intellectual

movement within the confines of his country. But

this renaissance of learning was not of long dura-

tion; and from the eleventh century on the schools

of Fulda and Reichenau and St. Gall fell into de-

cline and decay. In the twelfth century the same

fate befell the schools at Liege, which were depen-

dent on the Empire.* The German clerics also

went to French schools, — to Rheims, Chartres,

Laon, Paris, Le Bee — and the young barons con-

sidered it a privilege to be educated at the court of

Louis VII. Otloh of St. Emmeram, Otto of Frei-

singen, Manegold of Lautenbach, Hugo of St.

Victor, in fact all German theologians and philoso-

phers and humanists of repute in that century,

were educated in French schools, Paris is the

source of all science, writes Cesaire of Heister-

bach;^ scientists, adds Otto of Freising, have emi-

grated to France, — and both chronicles merely

reecho the saying of the time: "To Italy the

^Lettres de Gerbert (983-997), ed. Havet, Paris, 1889, p. 172.

4 Cf. my Histoire de la Philosophie en Belgique, Louvain, 1910,

pp. 18-22.

5 Steinhausen, op. cit., p. 355.

44 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

Papacy, to Germany the Empire, and to France

learning."

Italy also sent men in no small numbers. In the

eleventh century the monk Lanfranc, a type of

wandering professor, serves as an example. From

Pavia and from Bologna he went to the abbey of

Bee, and there was joined by another Italian, the

Piedmontese Anselm of Aosta. In the twelfth

century, Peter Lombard and Peter of Capua, and

Praepositinus of Cremona all taught at Paris. Ro-

lando Bandinelli, the future Pope Alexander III,

pursued his studies imder Abaelard; and he who

was to become Innocent III learned his theology

and his grammar at Paris. It must be said, how-

ever, that in Italy more than in England and in

Germany, there were independent centres of intel-

lectual life. Suffice it to mention the schools of Bo-

logna, whence arose a university as ancient and as

influential as that of Paris, and the Benedictine

schools of Monte Cassino, where in the eleventh cen-

tury Constantine of Carthage established one of the

first Occidental contacts with the world of Arabian

learning, and where later on Thomas Aquinas re-

ceived his early education.

But not all French schools enjoyed equal celeb-

rity ; they were rated according to the fame of their

professors, just as today a school's reputation and

its worth depend upon the excellence of its teaching

staff. Hence, we can understand the change in

the fame of the schools. Thus, for example, with