The period of monastic history with which these chapters are concerned opens some two hundred years before the close of what has been called the era of the Benedictine Centuries. This name, convenient in itself and correct enough if it is recognized as being nothing more than a very loose title, maybe taken to imply that for some five hundred years (c. 650–c. 1150) in Italy and the countries of Europe north and west of Italy (with the important exception of the Celtic civilization) monastic life based on the Rule of St Benedict was increasingly the norm and exercised from time to time a paramount influence on the spiritual, intellectual, liturgical and apostolical life of the Western Church. In other words, during these centuries the only type of religious life available in the countries concerned was monastic, and the ruling monastic code was the Rule of St Benedict. This period may be said to have begun with the great expansion of Benedictine monasticism in France and in England and to have ended, in essentials, with the rise of the new orders of monks and canons c, 1100, but monastic influence of one kind or another continued to be dominant in the Church until the emergence of the Universities in the second half of the twelfth century, followed shortly afterwards by the foundation of the orders of Friars.