taught, and suffered accordingly. The clergy who were
educated in the Italian rhetorical schools formed the
purely secular portion of their order, and led it into more
grievous disrepute. If the training of the scholastic was
associated with the function of the clerical politician, the
union was but external : by the assumption of literary arms
the church as a religious body lost more than it gained.
It is moreover significant that the schools of Italy
preserved a tradition of Roman law possibly uninter
rupted from ancient times.[1] The special law-school of
Pa via dates from the tenth century, and early m the
eleventh the study of law is spoken of in a way that gives
the impression of its being a long-established institution
in the ordinary schools. Milo Crispin records that Lanfranc, the famous archbishop of Canterbury, l was trained
from boyhood in the schools of liberal arts and civil law,
after the custom of his country ; in scholis liberalium
artium et legum saecularium ad suae morem patriae.
circumstances too make it highly probable that law formed
a regular subject of instruction in many schools from
a much earlier period. It would obviously engage the
attention of those churchmen who promised themselves
a future of political activity. The principles of Roman
law would combine themselves with their theological
ideas, and it is difficult not to trace in this connexion
one of the opportunities through which, in the judgement
of competent lawyers, n the phraseology and argumenta-
tive methods of the old jurisprudence were enabled to
penetrate the theology of western Christendom.
In the north, as we have said, the state of the clergy
was different.[2] They had their professional colleges in
- ↑ [Cf . Rashdall, The Universi- ties of Europe in the Middle Ages, 1. 95-108.]
- ↑ There is a curious and ancient gloss in the margin of the codex containing Gerbert s treatise De rational! et ratione uti, itself nearly contemporary with the author, which deserves quotation. ’Italia,’ it runs, fertilis in ferendis est frugibus, Gallia et Germania nobilis in nutriendis militibus. Nesciunt Itali quid sapiunt Galli. Itali denarios cunui- lant, Galli sapientiam corradunt ; Bernhard Fez, Thesaurus Anecdo- tonim novissimus 1 (2) 151 mg., Augsburg 1721 folio,
