376 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



churches and the festivals of the Church. The original user of 

 geometry was not required away from the valleys of the Nile, Tigris, 

 and Euphrates, and therefore it is now medicine and surgery that 

 come to the front for the alleviation of human ills. In the eleventh 

 century we find Salerno, soon to be famed throughout Europe as the 

 great medical school, forming itself into the first university. And 

 medicine did not exhaust all the science taught, for Adelard lis- 

 tened there to a lecture on " the nature of things," the cause of 

 magnetic attraction being one of the " things " in question. 



This teaching at Salerno preceded by many years the study of 

 the law at Bologna and of theology at Paris. 



The full flood came from the disturbance of the Arab wave 

 center by the crusades, about the beginning of the twelfth century. 

 After the Pope had declared the " Holy War," William of Malmes- 

 bury tells us " the most distant islands and savage countries were 

 inspired with this ardent passion. The Welshman left his hunting, 

 the Scotchman his fellowship with vermin, the Dane his drinking 

 party, the Norwegian his raw fish." Eeport has it that in 1096 

 no less than six millions were in motion along many roads to Pales- 

 tine. This, no doubt, is an exaggeration, but it reflects the excite- 

 ment of the time, and prepares us for what happened when the 

 crusaders returned. As Green puts it:* " The western nations, includ- 

 ing our own, ' were quickened with a new life and throbbing with 

 a new energy.' ... A new fervor of study sprang up in the West 

 from its contact with the more cultured East. Travelers like Ade- 

 lard, of Bath, brought back the first rudiments of physical and 

 mathematical science from the schools of Cordova or Bagdad. . . . 

 The long mental inactivity of feudal Europe broke up like ice be- 

 fore a summer's sun. Wandering teachers, such as Lanfranc or 

 Anselm, crossed sea and land to spread the new power of knowledge. 

 The same spirit of restlessness, of inquiry, of impatience with the 

 older traditions of mankind, either local or intellectual, that drove 

 half Christendom to the tomb of its Lord, crowded the roads with 

 thousands of young scholars hurrying to the chosen seats where 

 teachers were gathered together." 



Studium generate was the term first applied to a large educa- 

 tional center where there was a guild of masters, and whither stu- 

 dents flocked from all parts. At the beginning of the thirteenth cen- 

 tury the three principal studia were Paris, Bologna, and Salernp, 

 where theology and arts, law and medicine, and medicine almost by 

 itself, were taught respectively; these eventually developed into the 

 first universities, f 



* History of the English People, vol. i, p. 198. 



f See Histoire de l'Universite de Paris. Crevier, 1791, passim. 



