312 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
Already in the eleventh century there were distinct indica¬ 
tions of a renewed interest in the ancient authors. The real 
home of the revival was northern France., and our sur¬ 
est and most complete information in regard to it comes in 
shortly after the first crusade. “I see villages and towns fairly 
burn with eagerness in the study of grammar/’ wrote Gruibert 
of Hogent, in the preface to his history of the crusade. Else¬ 
where he adds that it had been far otherwise in the days of 
his boyhood. The center for the study of the classics was Char¬ 
tres. Here grammar was studied in the broad sense in accord¬ 
ance with the definition of Rabanus Maurus, who called it 
“The art of explaining poets and historians, the art of correct 
speaking and writing.” Hither came the Englishman, John of 
Salisbury. He has left us glowing accounts of the sympathetic 
method in which the classic authors were there taught. An ar¬ 
dent admirer of Cicero, he exclaims : “The world never pos¬ 
sessed a Latinist greater than Cicero.” Involuntarily we asso¬ 
ciate John of Salisbury with Petrarch. 
Towards the close of the twelfth century the schools of Char¬ 
tres declined rapidly. Orleans now became the center of clas¬ 
sical learning. Meanwhile the great universities were taking 
shape. The intellectual vigor of the twelfth century was finding 
its expression in these splendid new institutions of learning. 
We should expect that the study of the Latin authors would have 
found at them a wider scope. But the renewed interest in the 
classics was only one of the factors of the revival, and by no 
means the most pronounced. All the greatest intellects of the 
age were bending their best efforts towards scholastic philosophy 
and theology, or the practical studies of medicine and law. 
Probably a university could never have arisen on a purely hum¬ 
anistic basis. It required an Abelard and an Irnerius to lay 
the foundations of universities. 
Thus from the very start, the classics were overshadowed at 
these new institutions by more popular studies. For a long 
time, however, they still held their own. At the beginning of 
the thirteenth century various writers associated Orleans with 
the great universities of the day. As Salerno was known for 
medicine, Bologna for law, Paris for arts, so, they said, Orleans 
