Just as the cathedrals were the expansions of the conventual churches, the universities were expansions of the monastic schools; and, as Preissig has observed, this transformation was due in the main to the great reputation for learning enjoyed by the schoolmen, “who attracted such multitudes of students that it was found necessary to recognise the schools on a broader basis.”[122] Our own oldest university, that of Oxford, owes its foundation to a mandate from the Holy See. The first university to be founded in Europe was that of Paris. The second was that of Bologna. Though Spain possesses some of the finest specimens of Gothic architecture in the world, she has never made that style her own. Her grandest Gothic cathedrals were designed by foreign architects; and in her remote corners, like Galicia, that style never reached perfection. We will tell our readers at once that there is no example of pure Gothic art in the whole of Galicia, in spite of the fact that it struggled hard to find a footing. In the fifteenth century, when the rules of Gothic architecture were being followed by all the greatest architects of Europe (except the Italians), it had already passed its highest stage of development, and its glories were beginning to decline. Italy was already turning to the past for fresh inspiration. Nicolas of Pisa was already copying the sculpture of pagan sarcophagi; Petrarch was unearthing the classic literature of Greece and Rome; Giotto was appropriating the pictorial art of the Byzantine Church, and Brunelleschi was replacing the Gothic pillar by a classical column. Sculpture had opened the way, literature and painting had followed in her footsteps, and it only remained for architecture to do likewise. The Renaissance originated in Italy, and in Italy it attained to its highest development.[123] Gothic architecture had been the work of men who only valued their handiwork as an expression of religious faith, it was nothing if not symbolic; but with the Renaissance the spirit of faith, reverence, superstition, or whatever we may choose to call it, was changed into something quite different. In the Renaissance, as Lamperez has forcibly expressed it, men began to value their work intrinsically, and individuals began to claim their personal rights. Buildings began to be admired for the grandeur of their conception, the delicacy of their form; the amount of labour they had cost, and their symbolism were forgotten. In the age of St. Bernard, cathedrals were raised for the glory of God; during the Renaissance, they were raised to enhance human glory.