icipal power brought the noble and the burgher upon the
same level, and developed a common sentiment for education. The
activity of the crusades, already referred to, developed a thirst for
knowledge. There was also a gradual growth of traditional learning, an
accumulation of knowledge of a certain kind, which needed
classification, arrangement, and development. By degrees the schools
of Arabia, which had been prominent in their development, not only of
Oriental learning but of original investigation, had given a quickening
impulse to learning throughout southern Europe. The great division of
the church between the governed and governing had led to the
development of a strong lay feeling as opposed to monasticism or
ecclesiasticism. Perhaps the growth of local representative government
had something to do with this.

But the time came when great institutions were chartered at these
centres of learning. Students flocked to Bologna, where law was
taught; to Salerno, where medicine was the chief subject; and to Paris,
where philosophy and theology predominated. At first these schools
were open to all, without special rules. Subsequently they were
organized, and finally were chartered. In those days students elected
their own {361} instructors and built up their own organization. The
schools were usually called _universitas magistrorum et scholarium_.
They were merely assemblages of students and instructors, a sort of
scholastic guild or combination of teachers and scholars, formed first
for the protection of their members, and later allowed by pope and
emperor the privilege of teaching, and finally given the power by these
same authorities to grant degrees. The result of these schools was the
widening of the influence of education.

The universities proposed to teach what was found in a new and revived
literature and to adopt a new method of presenting truth. Yet, with
all these widening foundations, there was a tendency to be bound by
traditional learning. The scholastic philosophy itself invaded the
universities and had its influence in breaking down the scientific
spirit. Not only was this true of the universities of the continent,
but of those of England as well. The German universities, however,
were less affected by this tendency of scholasticism. Founded at a
later period, when the Renaissance was about to be merged into the
Reformation, there was a wider foundation of knowledge, a more earnest
zea