University of Paris. Abelard’s method, says Père Denifle, is presented in the book which during several centuries served as the text for theological instruction, the _Sentences_ of Peter Lombard, and its influence is also to be noted in that other noteworthy work which became the authority for the schools of common law, the _Decretals_ of Gratian. Abelard may be called the first professor of superior instruction. His work was certainly begun with _éclat_, for his classes are said to have numbered at times no less than five thousand pupils. “First of the French philosophers ... he may justly be considered as the precursor of Ramus and Descartes, in other words, of the Renaissance and of the modern spirit.”[272] Apart from this more far-reaching influence, he was able to do for the school of Paris what the jurist Irnerius was, during nearly the same years, accomplishing for the school of Bologna, making possible, namely, its development into the university. It was through the work done by Abelard that “the theological school of Paris became the seminary of Christian Europe.”[273] This influence continued through the succeeding centuries in which Paris still remained the centre of theological instruction, a result which necessarily had later an important effect in shaping the character of the earlier issues of the Paris Press. The term _University_ is not a synonym of the university of science, but simply of the university of teachers and students who composed a group and who instituted association of studies. “In the language of the Civil Law,” says Malden, “all corporations were called _Universitates_, as forming one whole out of many individuals.”[274] The organisation of the University of Paris, while differing in certain important details from that of Bologna, was substantially identical with the Italian institutions in respect to the privileges conceded to instructors and students. In successive enactments or crown edicts, the members of the universities of Paris, Montpellier, and Poitiers were exempted, not only from the regular national taxes and from the town dues (_octroi_), but also from special war taxes. In 1295, Philip the Fair decreed that under no pretext could the goods of the members of the universities be taken or their revenues attached.[275] The following statute of the University of Padua represented fairly enough the status of students in all the universities of France and of Italy: “Students must be considered as citizens in what concerns the advantages, but not in that which constitutes the burdens of citizens.” Under this same principle, members of the universities were also exempt from military service.