Faculties called liberal [i.e., free] have lost their old time
liberty, and are devoted to a slavery so complete that
long-haired youths shamelessly possess themselves of the offices
in these Faculties, and beardless boys sit in the seat of the
Elders, and those who do not yet know how to be pupils strive to
be named Doctors. And they themselves compile their own
summaries, reeking and wet with [their own] further drivellings,
and not even seasoned with the salt of the philosophers.
Neglecting the rules of the Arts and throwing away the standard
works of the Makers of the Arts, they catch in their sophisms, as
in spiders' webs, the midges of their empty trifling phrases.
Philosophy cries out that her garments are rent and torn asunder;
she modestly covers her nakedness with certain carefully prepared
remnants [but] she is neither consulted by the good man nor does
she console the good woman.

These things, O Father, demand the hand of Apostolic correction,
that the present unseemliness of teaching, learning, and debating
may by your authority be reduced to definite form, that the
Divine Word may not be cheapened by vulgar attrition; that it may
not be said on the corners, Lo! Here is Christ, or Lo! He is
there! that sacred things may not be cast before dogs or pearls
before swine to be trampled under their feet.[77]


(b) _The Monastic View_

To many of the monks of this period study and the search for truth
through reason were repellent. In their view the way to spiritual truth
was through retirement from the world, and the observance of religious