onferred on mortal man the benefit of books.... Books are the
masters that instruct us without rods or ferulas, without reprimands or
anger, without the solemnity of the gown or the expense of lessons. Go
to them, you will not find them asleep; question them, they will not
refuse to answer; if you err, no scoldings on their part; if you are
ignorant, no mocking laughter."[240]

These teachings and these examples bore fruit; in renovated England,
Latin-speaking clerks swarmed. It is often difficult while reading their
works to discover whether they are of native or of foreign extraction;
hates with them are less strong than with the rest of their
compatriots; most of them have studied not only in England but in
Paris; science has made of them cosmopolitans; they belong, above all,
to the Latin country, and the Latin country has not suffered.

The Latin country had two capitals, a religious capital which was Rome,
and a literary capital which was Paris. "In the same manner as the city
of Athens shone in former days as the mother of liberal arts and the
nurse of philosophers, ... so in our times Paris has raised the standard
of learning and civilisation, not only in France but in all the rest of
Europe, and, as the mother of wisdom, she welcomes guests from all parts
of the world, supplies all their wants, and submits them all to her
pacific rule."[241] So said Bartholomew the Englishman in the thirteenth
century. "What a flood of joy swept over my heart," wrote in the
following century another Englishman, that same Richard de Bury, "every
time I was able to visit that paradise of the world, Paris! My stay
there always seemed brief to me, so great was my passion. There were
libraries of perfume more delicious than caskets of spices, orchards of
science ever green...."[242] The University of Paris held without
contest the first rank during the Middle Ages; it counted among its
students, kings, saints, popes, statesmen, poets, learned men of all
sorts come from all countries, Italians like Dante, Englishmen like
Stephen Langton.

Its lustre dates from the twelfth century. At that time a fusion
took place between the theological school of Notre-Dame, where shone,
towards the beginning of the century, Guillaume de Champeaux, and the
schools of logic that Abelard's teaching gave birth to on St.
Genevieve's Mount. This state of things was not created, but
consecrated by Pope Innocent III., a former student at Paris, who
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