But their outlook upon life was changed. They began to
wear different clothes--to speak a different language--to live

different lives in different houses.
They no longer concentrated all their thoughts and their

efforts upon the blessedexistence that awaited them in Heaven.
They tried to establish their Paradise upon this planet, and,

truth to tell, they succeeded in a remarkable degree.
I have quite often warned you against the danger that

lies in historical dates. People take them too literally. They
think of the Middle Ages as a period of darkness and ignor-

ance. ``Click,'' says the clock, and the Renaissance begins and
cities and palaces are flooded with the bright sunlight of an

eager intellectualcuriosity.
As a matter of fact, it is quite impossible to draw such

sharp lines. The thirteenth century belonged most decidedly
to the Middle Ages. All historians agree upon that. But was

it a time of darkness and stagnation merely? By no means.
People were tremendously alive. Great states were being

founded. Large centres of commerce were being developed.
High above the turretted towers of the castle and the peaked

roof of the town-hall, rose the slender spire of the newly built
Gothic cathedral. Everywhere the world was in motion. The

high and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall, who had just become
conscious of their own strength (by way of their recently

acquired riches) were struggling for more power with their
feudal masters. The members of the guilds who had just become

aware of the important fact that ``numbers count'' were
fighting the high and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall. The

king and his shrewd advisers went fishing in these troubled
waters and caught many a shining bass of profit which they

proceeded to cook and eat before the noses of the surprised and
disappointed councillors and guild brethren.

To enliven the scenery during the long hours of evening
when the badly lighted streets did not invite further political

and economic dispute, the Troubadours and Minnesingers told
their stories and sang their songs of romance and adventure

and heroism and loyalty to all fair women. Meanwhile youth,
impatient of the slowness of progress, flocked to the universities,

and thereby hangs a story.
The Middle Ages were ``internationally minded.'' That

sounds difficult, but wait until I explain it to you. We modern
people are ``nationally minded.'' We are Americans or Englishmen

or Frenchmen or Italians and speak English or French
or Italian and go to English and French and Italian universities,

unless we want to specialise in some particular branch
of learning which is only taught elsewhere, and then we learn

another language and go to Munich or Madrid or Moscow.
But the people of the thirteenth or fourteenth century rarely

talked of themselves as Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians.
They said, ``I am a citizen of Sheffield or Bordeaux or Genoa.''

Because they all belonged to one and the same church they felt
a certain bond of brotherhood. And as all educated men could

speak Latin, they possessed an international language which
removed the stupid language barriers which have grown up

in modern Europe and which place the small nations at such
an enormousdisadvantage. Just as an example, take the case

of Erasmus, the great preacher" target="_blank" title="n.讲道者，传教士">preacher of tolerance and laughter, who
wrote his books in the sixteenth century. He was the native

of a small Dutch village. He wrote in Latin and all the world
was his audience. If he were alive to-day, he would write in

Dutch. Then only five or six million people would be able to
read him. To be understood by the rest of Europe and America,

his publishers would be obliged to translate his books into
twenty different languages. That would cost a lot of money

and most likely the publishers would never take the trouble
or the risk.

Six hundred years ago that could not happen. The greater
part of the people were still very ignorant and could not read

or write at all. But those who had mastered the difficult art
of handling the goose-quill belonged to an internationalrepublic

of letters which spread across the entire continent and which
knew of no boundaries and respected no limitations of language

or nationality. The universities were the strongholds of
this republic. Unlike modern fortifications, they did not follow

the frontier. They were to be found wherever a teacher
and a few pupils happened to find themselves together. There

again the Middle Ages and the Renaissance differed from our
own time. Nowadays, when a new university is built, the

process (almost invariably) is as follows: Some rich man
wants to do something for the community in which he lives or

a particular religious sect wants to build a school to keep its
faithful children under decentsupervision, or a state needs doc-

tors and lawyers and teachers. The university begins as a
large sum of money which is deposited in a bank. This money

is then used to construct buildings and laboratories and dormitories.
Finally professional" target="_blank" title="a.职业的 n.自由职业">professional teachers are hired, entrance examinations

are held and the university is on the way.
But in the Middle Ages things were done differently. A wise man

said to himself, ``I have discovered a great truth. I must impart my
knowledge to others.'' And he began to preach his wisdom

wherever and whenever he could get a few people to listen to him,
like a modern soap-box orator. If he was an interesting speaker, the

crowd came and stayed. If he was dull, they shrugged their shoulders
and continued their way.

By and by certain young men began to come regularly to hear
the words of wisdom of this great teacher. They brought copybooks

with them and a little bottle of ink and a goose quill and
wrote down what seemed to be important. One day it rained.

The teacher and his pupils retired to an empty basement or
the room of the ``Professor.'' The learned man sat in his chair

and the boys sat on the floor. That was the beginning of the
University, the ``universitas,'' a corporation of professors and

students during the Middle Ages, when the ``teacher'' counted
for everything and the building in which he taught counted for

very little.
As an example, let me tell you of something that happened

in the ninth century. In the town of Salerno near Naples there
were a number of excellent physicians. They attracted people

desirous of learning the medicalprofession and for almost a
thousand years (until 1817) there was a university of Salerno

which taught the wisdom of Hippocrates, the great Greek doctor
who had practiced his art in ancient Hellas in the fifth

century before the birth of Christ.
Then there was Abelard, the young priest from Brittany,

who early in the twelfth century began to lecture on theology
and logic in Paris. Thousands of eager young men flocked

to the French city to hear him. Other priests who disagreed
with him stepped forward to explain their point of view. Paris

was soon filled with a clamouring multitude of Englishmen and
Germans and Italians and students from Sweden and Hungary

and around the old cathedral which stood on a little island in
the Seine there grew the famous University of Paris.

In Bologna in Italy, a monk by the name of Gratian had
compiled a text-book for those whose business it was to know

the laws of the church. Young priests and many laymen then
came from all over Europe to hear Gratian explain his ideas.

To protect themselves against the landlords and the innkeepers
and the boarding-house ladies of the city, they formed a corporation

(or University) and behold the beginning of the university
of Bologna.

Next there was a quarrel in the University of Paris. We do
not know what caused it, but a number of disgruntled teachers

together with their pupils crossed the channel and found a
hospitable home in n little village on the Thames called Oxford,

and in this way the famous University of Oxford came into
being. In the same way, in the year 1222, there had been a split

in the University of Bologna. The discontented teachers (again
followed by their pupils) had moved to Padua and their proud city

thenceforward boasted of a university of its own. And so it went
from Valladolid in Spain to Cracow in distant Poland and from

Poitiers in France to Rostock in Germany.
It is quite true that much of the teaching done by these

early professors would sound absurd to our ears, trained to
listen to logarithms and geometrical theorems. The point

however, which I want to make is this--the Middle Ages and
especially the thirteenth century were not a time when the

world stood entirely still. Among the younger generation,
there was life, there was enthusiasm, and there was a restless

if somewhat bashful asking of questions. And out of this
turmoil grew the Renaissance.

But just before the curtain went down upon the last scene
of the Mediaeval world, a solitary figure crossed the stage, of

whom you ought to know more than his mere name. This
man was called Dante. He was the son of a Florentine lawyer

who belonged to the Alighieri family and he saw the light of
day in the year 1265. He grew up in the city of his ancestors

while Giotto was painting his stories of the life of St. Francis
of Assisi upon the walls of the Church of the Holy Cross, but

often when he went to school, his frightened eyes would see the
puddles of blood which told of the terrible and endless warfare

that raged forever between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines,
the followers of the Pope and the adherents of the Emperors.

When he grew up, he became a Guelph, because his father
had been one before him, just as an American boy might become

a Democrat or a Republican, simply because his father
had happened to be a Democrat or a Republican. But after a

few years, Dante saw that Italy, unless united under a single
head, threatened to perish as a victim of the disordered jealousies

of a thousand little cities. Then he became a Ghilbeiline.
He looked for help beyond the Alps. He hoped that a

mightyemperor might come and re-establish unity and order.
Alas! he hoped in vain. The Ghibellines were driven out of

Florence in the year 1802. From that time on until the day
of his death amidst the dreary ruins of Ravenna, in the year