his accumulation of comments was to draw the attention of
both teachers and students more and more away from the text. There is
evidence that in some instances the text was almost wholly neglected in
the attempt to master the glosses. University reforms at the end of the
fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century sometimes involved
the exclusion of this mass of "frivolous and obscure" comment from the
lectures, and a return to the study of the text itself. See the
introduction to the plan of studies for Leipzig, p. 48.

The selection from the Canon Law (p. 59 ff.) gives a good idea of the
substance of a dictated mediaeval lecture. Concerning the "original" and
more or less off-hand lecture we have the amusing account of Giraldus
Cambrensis (_c._ 1146-1220), in his "most flattering of all
autobiographies." After recounting--in the third person--his studies at
Paris in Civil and Canon Law, and Theology, he says:

He obtained so much favor in decretal cases, which were wont to
be handled Sundays, that, on the day on which it had become known
throughout the city that he would talk, there resulted such a
concourse of almost all the doctors with their scholars, to hear
his pleasing voice, that scarcely could the amplest house have
held the auditors.

And with reason, for he so supported with rhetorical
persuasiveness his original, wide-awake treatment of the Laws and
Canons, and so embellished his points both with figures and
flowers of speech and with pithy ideas, and so applied the
sayings of philosophers and authors, which he inserted in
fitting places with marvellous cleverness, that the more learned
and erudite the congregation, the more eagerly and attentively
did they apply ears and minds to listening and memorizing. Of a
truth they were led on and besmeared with words so sweet that,
hanging, as it were, in suspense on the lips of the
speaker,--though the address was long and involved, of a sort
that is wont to be tedious to many,--they found it impossible to
be fatigued, or even sated, with hearing the man.

And so the scholars strove to take down all his talks, word for
word, as they emanated from his lips, and to adopt them with
great eagerness. Moreover, on a certain day when the concourse
from all parts to hear him was great, when the lecture was over
and was followed by a murmur of