The Provençal literature, further, was from the first influenced by the culture of the Saracens, [1324] who held Sicily and Calabria in the ninth and tenth centuries, and had held part of Languedoc itself for a few years in the eighth. On the passing of the duchy of Provence to Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona, at the end of the eleventh century, not only were the half-Saracenized Catalans mixed with the Provençals, but Raymond and his successors freely introduced the arts and science of the Saracens into their dominion. [1325] In the Norman kingdom of Sicily too the Saracen influence was great even before the time of Frederick II; and thence it reached afresh through Italy to Provence, [1326] carrying with it everywhere, by way of poetry, an element of anti-clerical and even of anti-Christian rationalism. [1327] Though this spirit was not that of the Cathari and Waldenses, yet the fact that the latter strongly condemned the Crusades [1328] was a point in common between them and the sympathizers with Saracen culture. And as the tolerant Saracen schools of Spain or the Christian schools of the same region, which copied their curriculum, [1329] were in that age resorted to by youth from each of the countries of western Europe for scientific teaching [1330]--all the latest medical and most other scientific knowledge being in their hands--the influence of such culture must have been peculiarly strong in Provence. [1331] The medieval mystery-plays and moralities, already common in Provence, mixed at times with the normal irreverence of illiterate faith [1332] a vein of surprisingly pronounced skeptical criticism, [1333] which at the least was a stimulus to critical thought among the auditors, even if they were supposed to take it as merely dramatic. Inasmuch as the drama was hereditarily pagan, and had been continually denounced and ostracized by Fathers and Councils, [1334] it would be natural that its practitioners, even when in the service of the Church, should be unbelievers. The philosophy and science of both the Arabs and the Spanish Jews were specially cultivated in the Provence territory. The college of Montpellier practised on Arab lines medicine, botany, and mathematics; and the Jews, who had been driven from Spain by the Almohades, had flourishing schools at Narbonne, Beziers, Nîmes, and Carcassonne, as well as Montpellier, and spread alike the philosophy of Averroës and the semi-rational theology of the Jewish thinker Maimonides, [1335] whose school held broadly by Averroïsm.