The books thus read consisted of two parts,--the text, and the "glosses"
or comments. A glance at the selection on page 60 will reveal the nature
of the latter: they were summaries, explanations, controversial notes,
and cross-references, written by more or less learned scholars, in the
margin of the text. In the course of generations the mass of glosses
became so great as fairly to smother the original work. The selection
just referred to is not especially prolific in glosses; cases may be
found in which the text of a page occupies only three or four lines, the
rest of the space being completely filled with comments, and with
explanations of the comments. Instances of books explained to death are
not unknown in our own class-rooms!

The effect of this accumulation of comments was to draw the attention of
both teachers and students more and more away from the text. There is
evidence that in some instances the text was almost wholly neglected in
the attempt to master the glosses. University reforms at the end of the
fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century sometimes involved
the exclusion of this mass of "frivolous and obscure" comment from the
lectures, and a return to the study of the text itself. See the
introduction to the plan of studies for Leipzig, p. 48.

The selection from the Canon Law (p. 59 ff.) gives a good idea of the
substance of a dictated mediaeval lecture. Concerning the "original" and
more or less off-hand lecture we have the amusing account of Giraldus
Cambrensis (_c._ 1146-1220), in his "most flattering of all
autobiographies." After recounting--in the third person--his studies at
Paris in Civil and Canon Law, and Theology, he says:

He obtained so much favor in decretal cases, which were wont to
be handled Sundays, that, on the day on which it had become known