The scientific activity of the Middle Ages received the name of =Scholasticism= from the cathedral and cloister schools in which it originated (§ 90, 8). The Schoolmen, with their enthusiasm and devotion, their fidelity and perseverance, their courage and love of combat, may be called the knights of theology. Instead of sword and spear they used logic, dialectic and speculation; and profound scholarship was their breastplate and helmet. Ecclesiastical orthodoxy was their glory and pride. Aristotle, and also to some extent Plato, afforded them their philosophical basis and method. The Fathers in their utterances, _sententiæ_, the Councils in their dogmas and canons, the popes in their decretals, yielded to this Dialectic Scholasticism theological material which it could use for the systematising, demonstrating, and illustrating of the Church doctrine. If we follow another intellectual current, we find the Mystical Scholasticism taking up, as the highest task of theology, the investigating and describing of the hidden life of the pious thinker in and with God according to its nature, course, and results by means of spiritual contemplation on the basis of one’s individual experience. Dogmatics (including Ethics) and the Canon Law constituted the peculiar field of the Dialectic Theology of the Schoolmen. The standard of dogmatic theology during the 12th century was the Book of the Sentences of the Lombard (§ 102, 5); that of the Canon Law the Decree of Gratian. Biblical Exegesis as an independent department of scientific study stood, indeed, far behind these two, but was diligently prosecuted by the leading representatives of Scholasticism. The examination of the simple literal sense, however, was always regarded as a secondary consideration; while it was esteemed of primary importance to determine the allegorical, tropological, and anagogical signification of the text (§ 90, 9).