Chapter 10

From the early Middle Age onwards, we can see a marked rise in education and
learning, mainly due to the monasteries. At the end of the eleventh century
and beginning of the twelfth, there was a revival of culture and literature
within the Western providences of France. The leaders were not philosophers
or theologians, but rather poets and humanists who knew the classics and
enjoyed conversing between knowledgeable people. John of Salisbury was a
marked and well known scholar. Bologna was a highly educational university
at the time and was much envied by other schools. It was also very
influential to other outlying cities and countries. There were other schools
similar to this one in Italy and France. A Bologna degree, however,
--especially the double doctorate of Civil and Canon Laws -- was generally
regarded as the highest academic honour in the world. The fourteenth century
was full of division and strife and saw at least one invasion. "It is as
though the spiritual tide which had been steadily making for unity for three
centuries had suddenly turned, so that everywhere in every aspect of life
the forces that made for division and dissolution were predominant."