In Spain, the earliest university was that of Palencia, which was founded in 1212. Salamanca, founded a few years later, soon exceeded Palencia in importance, and, particularly in connection with the work of its medical Faculty, secured for itself, before the close of the thirteenth century, a repute throughout Europe. Compayré is of opinion that the instruction given in Salamanca, not only in medicine but in science generally and in philosophy, was very largely influenced by the presence in the peninsula of Moorish scholars. “The philosophy of Averrhoes and the medicine of Avicenna exerted a manifest influence on the development of studies at Salamanca.”[269] It seems probable, if this belief is well founded, that the Arabian literature, produced and manifolded in Cordova, found its way to Salamanca, and through Salamanca to Salerno, Bologna, and Paris. The formal constitution of the University of Paris dates from 1202. Certain of its historians, however, claim for its first work as an educational institution a much earlier date. Crévier, for instance, says: “The University of Paris as a school goes back to Alcuin ... Charlemagne was its founder.”[270] Charlemagne’s practical interest in education has caused his name to be associated with the schools of Tours, Aachen, Milan, Salerno, Bologna, and Paris. The most recent writer on the subject, Compayré, is of opinion that this is an exaggerated statement. He finds evidence of an unbroken succession of Benedictine schools, such as those of Rheims, Tours, Angers, Laon, Bec, and others, which had preserved a continuity of educational work from the time of Charlemagne to that of Louis VIII., and which, under such leaders as Lanfranc (1005-1089), and S. Anselm (1033-1109), had developed and maintained a high degree of intellectual activity. He considers these to have constituted the direct succession to the schools of the palace of Charlemagne, but he fails to find in them the prototype of the university system. For Compayré, the actual founder of the University of Paris was Abelard, who died sixty years before the university secured its organisation. It is his contention that it was Abelard who, by his learning, his independence of thought, his eloquence, and his mastery over the minds of men, is to be credited with the initiation of the great movement from which was to proceed not only the University of Paris, but the long series of universities for which Paris served as an incentive and the type. It was Abelard, says Compayré, who, if not first, at least with the most direct and far-reaching influence, introduced dialectics into theology and reason into authority, breaking away from the mere passive transmission of the beliefs and timid dialectics accepted by the schools of theology, and thus making possible the development of a true university spirit. “The method of Abelard is the soul of scholastic philosophy,”[271] the philosophy which, until the Renaissance, reigned supreme in the