ficate a number of collections of canon law had been produced, and about 1140 they were distilled in the collection compiled by Gratian. His attempt to reconcile contradictory precedents by identifying the underlying principles and then extending them to analogous cases indicated in the clearest possible way that precedent did not make law though it might help to justify it. The making of ecclesiastical law was reserved to the papacy, and the legislation it issued began to encourage kings to do likewise.

The re-creation and transformation of Roman example was something which touched almost all spheres of thought and art, though the achievement was more superficial in some spheres than others. The literature of antiquity had been preserved almost entirely through the work of monks, and monks were the principal compilers of history. In many cases they took the events of the present and recent past and then put them into the context of events since the Creation. The divine framework thus enclosed the Roman. At the same time, however, Roman historians began to influence their successors more independently. Their histories had been written in terms of the deeds of great men, and their deeds had been evaluated in terms of their benefit to the state; the supernatural was largely absent. Both of these strands can be seen in the works of northern historians from the eleventh century. The result was the emergence of a style of historical writing which at once provided a fresh basis of authority, conceived largely in secular terms, and a series of criteria by which its representatives might be tried and found wanting.

Theology was also the preserve of monasteries, and then of cathedral schools, during the tenth and eleventh centuries. During the twelfth century some of these schools began to attract celebrated teachers, not in their employ, who lived off the fees which they could draw from their pupils; such were the origins of the University of Paris. Verbal acumen, a readiness to challenge older doctrine and that of his colleagues, and a responsiveness to new trends became the hallmarks of the successful teacher. Nobody exemplified these characteristics more clearly than Peter Abelard; he taught that acts were good

-135-