216 History of Universities
knowledge of God through a study of His word and works,
the rich resources of European learning would have been
lost, colonial education would have been slight and wholly
utilitarian in character, and a century ago the United States
would have had to start from the bottom in building up
schools of higher learning, instead of undertaking the lighter
task of expanding and transforming to modern purposes the
colonial colleges that had kept learning alive through pioneer
poverty. That the Churches, Catholic and Protestant, have
dealt many blows at academic freedom everyone knows ; yet
these weigh but a feather in the scale against the immense
service to civilization performed by the Catholic Church and
the Reformed Churches, through the universities that they
founded and fostered.
Almost simultaneously, in the twelfth century, there
sprangup in Western Europe two universities: Bologna and
Paris; and from these two are descended in direct line the
universities of Latin America, and of the United States.
In Italy, where Roman law survived, the growth of com-
merce and of communal life in the twelfth century created a
demand for trained lawyers. At the same time the Church
was developing a law of her own, through the successive
canons and decretals issued by popes and councils, and this
discordant body of Canon Law was sadly in need of straight-
ening out. By chance, two great teachers, Irnerius and
Gratian, began holding forth at Bologna during the first
half of the twelfth century; the one on Civil, and the other
on Canon Law. Gratian’s “Decretal” was “one of those
great text-books which appearing just at the right time and
in the right place, take the world by storm.” Both Irnerius
and Gratian are somewhat shadowy figures. Traditionally,
it was due to the teaching of the one and the text-book of the
other that Docta Bononia became a Mecca for students of
both Laws ; and eventually of Arts and Medicine as well.