Page:Western Europe in the Middle Ages.djvu/194

178 state, and yet the state was not yet demanding much from them in the form of taxes or service. The peasants of north France probably profited most from this situation; there were more serfs in England, more wars in Italy, and more dangers from the unbridled power of great lords in Germany.

Prosperity alone does not guarantee great intellectual and artistic activity, but a certain surplus of manpower and resources is necessary before a society can devote much attention to enterprises which are not directly essential to its survival. Western Europe had such a surplus in the thirteenth century, and it had all the exciting new ideas of the twelfth century to stimulate its interest in scholarship, literature, and art. Certainly more young men were educated, more books were written, and more churches were built in the thirteenth than in any earlier medieval century.

The desire for knowledge and the demand for professional training, which had been striking features of the twelfth-century revival, became even more widespread after 1200. The older universities of Paris and Bologna continued to flourish, and new ones had to be founded to take care of the increasing number of students. Oxford became a real rival of Paris in philosophy, while Padua, Montpellier, and Orléans competed with Bologna in civil and canon law. The first Spanish universities also date from this period. Germany developed no university until the fourteenth century, but the Dominican school at Cologne, under the great scholar Albertus Magnus, was famous as a center of learning. University graduates, especially those with law degrees, continued to hold the highest posts in the Church and became prominent in the affairs of secular governments.

Just as important as the increase in the number of university students was the growth of interest in learning among men who had never attended universities. Most business men, many minor officials, and some landowners could read a little, and books were produced to satisfy their needs. Like other ages in which there has been a sudden increase in the reading population, the thirteenth