Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/115

Rh acknowledged masters in theology. At another d it is Wicelin, a mature teacher at Bremen, who gives up his school and spends some years in France, learning the interpretation of holy Writ from the same masters. Anselm, the 'doctor of doctors,' the pupil perhaps of his more famous namesake at Bec, was at different times the master both of William of Champeaux, who seems to have been in some sort regarded as his legitimate successor, and of Abailard, e who characteristically despised him as an eloquent man without much judgement; not to speak of Alberic of Rheims, Gilbert of La Porrée, and many more of the theological students of the time. f He died as early as 1117, and the g school was thenceforward directed by his brother alone; but it seems to have soon lost its peculiar eminence, and with Ralph's death in h 1138 it sank again into the obscurity from which their single efforts had raised it.

Apart from the personal weight of the teachers, the school had acquired a peculiar and almost unique name for the stedfast fidelity with which it maintained and handed on the pure theological tradition of the church.