Selections from the Prose Writings of John Henry Cardinal Newman / For the Use of Schools

by John Henry Newman

SUPPLY AND DEMAND: THE SCHOOLMEN

183: 21. Paris, etc. The great Universities reached the zenith of excellence in the thirteenth century, the age of Pope Innocent III, St. Thomas, and Dante.

185: 10. Bec. Famous monastery founded by a poor Norman knight, Herluin. Bec drew the great Lanfranc and others to its school. Many are accustomed to regard the Renaissance as the fountain whence have issued all streams of art, literature, and science. It is only necessary to turn to any of the teeming university or monastic centers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to dispel this so common illusion.