ad again a little leisure, and the desire for knowledge
reawakened, but indeed it was no mere gentle desire, but a veritable
passion which possessed the men of the twelfth century, and it was this
spontaneous passion which produced the universities.

The first thing, indeed, which we must observe about the oldest
universities of Europe, especially Bologna, Paris, and Oxford, is just
this, that they were not made by any external authority, that they did
not derive their being from Church or State, from pope or king, but that
they were formed by the enthusiasm and passion which drew men from every
quarter of Europe to sit at the feet of some man or another who could
give them the knowledge which they desired, and, in their turn, to
become teachers. It is quite true that as time went on, and they found
that popes and kings were friendly and interested, these groups of
students procured for themselves bulls and charters of recognition and
protection, but while later universities may trace their foundation to
these respectable patrons, the older universities recognize them indeed
as benefactors and friends, but not as founders, but rather claim that
they grew out of men's desire for knowledge, and that they were
recognized by the general consent of the civilized world.

In the second place it is important, and especially I think in these
days, to understand that the men who thus created the universities in
their eagerness to learn, were of every class and condition, rich and
poor, noble and simple, and they lived as they could, in comfortable
quarters if they were wealthy men, or in the garrets and cellars of the
citizens if they were poor, and for the most part they were poor; but
neither poverty nor riches could destroy their noble thirst for
knowledge. The life of the universities was indeed turbulent and
disorderly, the students were always at war with the citizens, and, when
they were not breaking the heads of the citizens or having their heads
broken by them, they were at war with each other, the men of the north
with the southerners, the western with the eastern; for the universities
were not local or national institutions, but were made up of a
cosmopolitan crowd of men of every nation in Europe, intelligible to
each other, as unhappily we are not, by the universal knowledge and use
of that mediaeval Latin, which might distress the Ciceronian ears of a
pedant of the Renaissance, but was a good, useful, and adaptable