The Arabians had introduced the knowledge of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, and the philosophy of Aristotle into Spain. (See Warton on Pope, vol. 1, p. 184.) At the beginning of the eleventh century several enlightened scholars undertook to educate the youth of the cities of Italy, and at a later period those of France, England and Germany. To the stability and prevalence of the education thus begun is the establishment of the universities of Europe attributable. Those of Paris and Oxford carry their claims to antiquity to the times of Alfred and Charlemagne, but it is said that the real claims of Paris stop with Phillip Augustus in the twelfth century. In the year 1264 Merton College was founded by Walter de Merton, Lord Chancellor of England and Bishop of Rochester, but the honorable title, "Mother of Universities of Europe" is due to Bologna. It was in her walls that learning, in the eleventh century, first attempted to raise her head.
It is said upon good authority that 10,000 students were assembled here in the next century, that is, somewhere about the beginning of the fourteenth century, and that each country in Europe had its resident regents and professors at Bologna. Here the studies of the civil and canon law constituted the almost exclusive objects of application, but Paris directed the attention of her scholars to theology. Oxford began at this time to acquire fame and to rival the foreign universities in the ability of its professors and the multitude of its members; in the year 1340 they amounted to 30,000. Many other universities were soon established upon the models of Bologna, Paris and Oxford. In these logic and scholastic divinity were for centuries the reigning subjects of pursuit. The works of Aristotle were studied with great eagerness. Upon the logic of Aristotle was founded the cultivation of scholastic theology and casuistry, which is a department of morals; its object is to lay down rules for directing us _how_ to act where there is any room for doubt or hesitation. To this belongs the decision of what are called cases of conscience, that is, cases in which we are under obligation, but which, from certain surroundings, give rise to doubt, or how far the obligation may be dissolved; such as the obligation to keep a promise obtained by fraud or force.