318 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
became too absorbing to allow tlie study of the authors to re¬ 
main important. By gradual stages it simply monopolized the 
field of higher learning in the north of Europe and the literary 
and classical tendencies of Chartres and Orleans died a death 
of sheer starvation. 
The change, however, did not take place without strong 
protests from many sides. The works of John of Salisbury are 
full of sane and vigorous denunciations of the foolish warfare 
of mere words without a previous foundation in real learning. 
He lamented that students praised only Aristotle and despised 
Cicero. 1 Nevertheless he was still hopeful and firmly believed 
that he could convince his contemporaries of the value of literary 
studies. Many more examples illustrating the same view 
might be drawn from Peter of Blois, Jean de Hauteville, Alex¬ 
ander Neckam and Gerald de Barri. As the thirteenth century 
advanced, however, the protests ceased and the dominance of 
Aristotle was absolute and unassailed. 
These are the definable causes which led to neglect of the clas¬ 
sics at the medieval universities. There may have been other 
causes, less tangible but of considerable weight. It should 
be remembered that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries com¬ 
prised an era of great material development. In many ways a 
“backwoods” Europe was being transformed into a Europe with 
large well-built cities and highways for travel and co m merce. 
It is always well worth while to reflect upon the bearing gen¬ 
eral conditions of life may have upon such a particular subject 
as we have in hand. 
As we approach the period of Petrarch and Laurentius Valla 
our curiosity is naturally aroused to see what part the universi¬ 
ties took in the revival of learning. In the first quarter of the 
fourteenth century several doctors were installed at the uni¬ 
versity of Bologna to lecture on Virgil, Cicero, Statius, Lucan 
and Ovid. This was a fair promise but it had no fulfillment. 
Later in the same century and in the next the university took 
practically no part in the humanistic movement which was stir¬ 
ring all about it. A more pronounced classical revival occur- 
i Entheticus, 112. 
