All surprise that surpassing original work was accomplished will cease when it is recalled that, besides creating the universities themselves, this century gave us the great Cathedrals--a well-spring of originality, and a literature in every civilized country of Europe that has been an inspiration to many subsequent generations. At last men had the time to devote to the things of the mind. During what are called the Dark Ages, a term that must ever be used with the realization that there are many bright points of light in them, men had been occupied with wars and civic and political dissensions of all kinds, and had been gradually climbing back to the heights of interest in intellectual matters which had been theirs before the invasion of the barbarians and the migration of nations. With the rebirth of intellectual interests there came an intense curiosity to know everything and to investigate every manifestation. { 79} Everything that men touched was novel, and the wonderful advances they made can only be realized from actual consultation of their works, while the reader puts himself as far as possible at the same mental point of view from which they surveyed the world and their relations to it.
The modern university prides itself on the number of volumes written by its professors and makes it a special feature of its announcements to call attention to its at least supposed additions to knowledge in this mode. It must have been immensely more difficult to preserve the writings of the professors of the medieval universities for they had to be copied out laboriously by hand, yet we have an enormous number of large volumes of their works, on nearly every intellectual topic, that have been carefully preserved. There are some twenty closely printed large folio volumes of the writings of Albertus Magnus that have come down to us. For two centuries, until the time of printing, ardent students must have been satisfied to spend much time in preserving these. While mainly devoted to theology, they treat of nearly everything else, and at least one of the folio volumes is taken up almost exclusively with physical science. St. Thomas Aquinas has as many volumes to his credit and his work is even of more importance. Duns Scotus died at a very early age, scarcely more than forty, yet his writings are voluminously extensive and have been carefully preserved, for few men had as enthusiastic students as he. Alas! that his name should be preserved for most people only in the familiar satiric appellation 'dunce.' The modern educator will most rejoice at the fact that the students of the time must have indeed been devoted to their masters to set themselves to the task of copying out their work so faithfully for, as Cardinal Newman has pointed out, it is the personal influence of the master, rather than the greatness of the institution, that makes education effective.