Of the Scholastics proper, from whom much at least of Bruno's terminology is derived, two seem to have influenced him most strongly:--Albert the Great, whose interest in natural science entitled him to a place in the temple of wisdom: "He had no equal in his time, and was far superior to Aristotle, whose school, in which he ranked according to the conditions of his age, was unworthy of him";[212] and Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor, "honour and glory of all and every race of theologians and of Peripatetic philosophers."[213] Generally speaking, however, the Scholastic is to Bruno the pedant, the dabbler in words, as contrasted with the student of nature or of reality.[214] Under this condemnation fell two of the greatest innovators upon the Aristotelian philosophy of his own time,--Ramus, and Patrizzi. The great logician was merely "a French arch-pedant, who has written _The School upon the Liberal Arts_, and the _Animadversions against Aristotle_. We may admit that he understood Aristotle, but he understood him badly; and had he understood him well, he would perhaps have been minded to make honourable war upon him, as the judicious Telesio has done."[215] The fashionable philosopher and Platonist is "_un altro sterco di pedanti_, an Italian who has soiled so many quires with his _Discussiones Peripateticae_; we cannot say he understood Aristotle, either well or ill, but he has read and re-read, stitched and unstitched, and compared with a thousand other Greek authors, friendly and unfriendly to Aristotle, and in the end has undergone great labour, not only without any profit, but also with very great disprofit, so that he who would see into what presumptuous folly and vanity the pedantic habit may plunge a man, let him look at that book, before the memory of it is lost." Tocco has laid his finger upon the reason for Bruno's dislike of these moderns, and it explains his objection to the Scholastics generally:--it was that they attempted to remodel and reform the Logic and Rhetoric of Aristotle, the very parts of his work which Bruno regarded as the most perfect,--and neglected the physical works, the theory of which had so powerful an authority to back it, and therefore all the more required the energies of the stronger minds of the time to be directed upon it.[216] [Sidenote: Lully, 1235-1305.]