Universities and universals

Up to the eleventh century almost all the scholarly work of the Christians of western Europe had taken place in the great monasteries: Fleury, Corbie, Freising, Reichenau, St Gall, Ramsey and many others. Monasteries were the setting of virtually all intellectual life, except in Italy. But during the central Middle Ages, from the ninth to the eleventh century, partly in response to Charlemagne's edict, schools were being set up in towns, usually closely associated with a cathedral. With the expansion of towns in the eleventh and twelfth centuries the cathedral schools grew in size and significance. If you wanted to get involved in the intellectual issues of the days, you might well study at one of the great cathedral schools of northern France – Reims, Laon, Orléans, Notre-Dame de Paris or Chartres – or perhaps across the Channel at Salisbury or Canterbury. Monastic schools continued to be important centres of learning, but the more open cathedral schools attracted many, while in Italy secular schools teaching law and medicine drew young men with their eye set upon a professional career.

Early in the thirteenth century some of these schools grew into the first universities, notably Paris, celebrated for the Arts, philosophy and theology, and Oxford, also famed for Arts and theology.