About the time that we find the beginnings of a university or guild of professors at Paris, a great institution of learning was growing up at Bologna. Here the chief attention was given, not to theology, as at Paris, but to the study of the law, both Roman and canon. Very early in the twelfth century a new interest in the Roman law became apparent in Italy, where the old jurisprudence of Rome had never been completely forgotten. Then, in 1142 or thereabouts, a monk, Gratian, published a great work in which he aimed to reconcile all the conflicting legislation of the councils and popes and to provide a convenient text-book for the study of the church or canon law. Students then began to stream to Bologna in greater numbers than ever before. In order to protect themselves in a town where they were regarded as strangers, they organized themselves into associations, which became so powerful that they were able to force the professors to obey the rules which they laid down. [Sidenote: Other universities founded.] The University of Oxford was founded in the time of Henry II, probably by English students and masters who had become discontented at Paris for some reason. The University of Cambridge, as well as numerous universities in France, Italy, and Spain, appeared in the thirteenth century. The German universities, which are still so famous, were established somewhat later, most of them in the latter half of the fourteenth and in the fifteenth centuries. The northern institutions generally took the great mother university on the Seine as their model, while those in southern Europe usually adopted the habits of Bologna. [Sidenote: The academic degree.] When, after some years of study, a student was examined by the professors, he was, if successful, admitted to the corporation of teachers and became a master himself. What we call a degree to-day was originally, in the mediæval universities, nothing more than the qualification to teach. But in the thirteenth century many began to desire the honorable title of master or doctor (which is only the Latin word for _teacher_) who did not care to become professors in our sense of the word.[174] [Sidenote: Simple methods of instruction.] The students in the mediæval universities were of all ages, from thirteen to forty, and even older. There were no university buildings, and in Paris the lectures were given in the Latin quarter, in Straw Street, so called from the straw strewn on the floors of the hired rooms where the lecturer explained the text-book, with the students squatting on the floor before him. There were no laboratories, for there was no experimentation. All that was required was a copy of the text-book,--Gratian's _Decretum_, the _Sentences_, a treatise of Aristotle, or a medical book. This the lecturer explained sentence by sentence, and the students listened and sometimes took notes. [Sidenote: The universities could move freely from one town to another.]