Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/639

 Books and Science in the Middle Ages 545 About the year iioo an ardent young man named Abelard Abeiard, started out from his home in Brittany to visit all the places ^' ^^'^^ where he might hope to receive instruction in looic and phi- losophy, in which, like all his learned contemporaries, he was especially interested. He reports that he found teachers in several of the French towns, particularly in Paris, who were attracting large numbers of students to listen to their lectures upon logic, rhetoric, and theology. Abelard soon show^ed his superiority to his teachers by defeating them several times in debate. So he began lecturing on his own account, and such was his success that thousands of students flocked to hear him. Abelard did not found the University of Paris, as has some- times been supposed, but he did a great deal to make the dis- cussions of theological problems popular, and by his attractive method of teaching he greatly increased the number of those who wished to study. Before the end of' the twelfth century the teachers had be- Origin of the come so numerous in Paris that they formed a union, or guild, of"parir^^ for the advancement of their interests. This union of professors- was called by the usual name for corporations in the Middle Ages, universitas ; hence our word " university." The king and the Pope both favored the university and granted the teachers and students many of the privileges of the clergy, a class to which they were regarded as belonging, because learning had for so many centuries been confined to the clergy. About the time that we find the beginnings of a university or study of the guild of professors at Paris, another great institution of learning canonlaw^ in was growing up at Bologna. Here the chief attention was given, ^^"^^Z"^^ not to theology, as at Paris, but to the study of the law, both Roman and church (canon) law. Students began to stream to Bologna in greater and greater numbers. In order to protect themselves in a town where they were regarded as strangers, they also organized themselves into unions, which became so powerful that they were able to force the professors to obey the rules which they laid down.