A succession of influences operating in the eleventh and twelfth centuries had widened the scope of human interests and produced a vague longing after knowledge which was not to be satisfied by the traditional teaching of the schools. Along with the demand for a different type and more advanced grade of instruction, there arose here and there famous lecturers, such as Abelard (1079-1142) at Paris, who gathered about themselves great numbers of disciples. Centers were thus created to which other teachers and their followers were attracted, and this in turn led to an informal association of masters and pupils, out of which the medieval university developed. The complete university came at length to include four departments—theology, law, medicine, and philosophy or the arts. Certain texts were thought to contain explicitly or implicitly the sum of ascertainable secular truth, just as the Bible and the writings of Church Fathers held all religious truth; and this was to be extracted by prescribed methods of reasoning, with no fresh resort to the facts of observation and experience. Instead of seeking new harvests, the typical schoolmen of that day were content with the continual threshing over of old straw.

As regards treatment of the body, the influence of asceticism was still supreme. Provision for lawful amusements was rarely made in the university statutes, which appear frequently to regard harmless attempts at pleasure with more hostility than they display toward actual vice and crime. The sports of chivalry—hunting and hawking, jousts and tournaments—were not considered seemly for the student, even if he had the means to indulge in them. Dancing was seldom countenanced in any form. “Playing with a ball or bat” is sometimes found included in the list of “insolent” games, and other prohibitions make mention of “profane games, immodest runnings, and horrid shoutings.” The ideal student would appear to be the one who denied himself all recreation and amusement; but we may be sure that no such suppression of animal spirits was possible for the average full-blooded young man of that age. In the absence of any authorized outlet they found vent in drinking, gambling, and grosser forms of vice, in street brawls and rough practical joking, and not infrequently in violent outbreaks of organized lawlessness.