§ 99.3. =The Nurseries of Scholasticism.=--The work previously done in cathedrals and cloister schools was, from about the 12th century, taken up in a more comprehensive and thorough way by the =Universities=. They were, as to their origin, independent of church and state, emperor and pope. Here and there famous teachers arose in the larger cities or in connection with some celebrated cloister or cathedral school. Youths from all countries gathered around them. Around the teacher who first attracted attention others gradually grouped themselves. Teachers and scholars organized themselves into a corporation, and thus arose the University. By this, however, we are to understand nothing less than a _Universitas litterarum_, where attention was given to the whole circle of the sciences. For a long time there was no thought of a distribution into faculties. When the multitude of teachers and students demanded a distribution into several corporations, this was done according to nations. The name signifies the _Universitas magistrorum et scholarium_ rather than an articulated whole. The study here pursued was called _Studium generale_ or _universale_, because the entrance thereto stood open to every one. At first each university pursued exclusively and in later times chiefly some special department of science. Thus, _e.g._ theology was prosecuted in Paris and Oxford and subsequently also in Cologne, jurisprudence in Bologna, Medicine in Salerno. The first university that expressly made provision for teaching all sciences was founded at Naples in A.D. 1224 with imperial munificence by Frederick II. The earliest attempt at a distribution of the sciences among distinct faculties was occasioned by the struggle between the university of Paris and the mendicant monks (§ 103, 1), who separated themselves from the other theological teachers and as members of a guild formed themselves in A.D. 1259 into a theological faculty. The number of the students, among whom were many of ripe years, was immensely great, and in some of the most celebrated universities reached often to ten or even twenty thousand. There was a ten years’ course prescribed for the training of the monks of Clugny: two years’ _Logicalia_, three years’ _Literæ naturales et philosophicæ_, and five years’ Theology. The Council at Tours in A.D. 1236 insisted that every priest should have passed through a five years’ course of study.[291] § 99.4. =The Epochs of Scholasticism.=--The intellectual work of the theologians of the Middle Ages during our period ran its course in four epochs, the boundaries of which nearly coincide with the boundaries of the four centuries which make up that period.