Major, not only by his own earlier writings, but as the representative in Scotland of the University of Paris, recalled to his countrymen the great struggle of the Middle Age in favour of freedom--and especially of church freedom against the Popes. That struggle indeed had Germany rather than France for its original centre, and it was under the flag of the Empire that the progressive despotism of Hildebrand and his successors over the feudal world was chiefly resisted. The Empire, however, was now a decaying force. Europe was being split into nationalities; and national churches--a novelty in Christendom--were, under various pretexts, coming into existence. For the last two centuries France had thus been the chief national opponent of the centralising influence of Rome, and the University of Paris was, during that time, the greatest theological school in the world. As such it had maintained the doctrine that the church universal could have no absolute monarch, but was bound to maintain its own self-government, and that its proper organ for this was a general council. And in the early part of the fifteenth century, when the schism caused by rival Popes had thrown back the Church upon its native powers, the University of Paris was the great influence which led the Councils of Constance and of Basle, not only to assert this doctrine, but to carry it into effect. But Major, when Knox met him, represented in this matter a cause already lost. Even in the previous century the decrees of the reforming Councils were at once frustrated by the successors of the Popes whom they deposed, and in this sixteenth century a Lateran Council had already anticipated the Vatican of the nineteenth by declaring the Pope to be supreme over Council and Church alike. Even the anti-Papal Councils themselves, too, were exclusively hierarchical, and accordingly they opposed any independent right on the part of the laity, as well as all serious enquiries into the earlier practice and faith of the Church. So at Constance the Chancellor of Paris, _Doctor Christianissimus_ as well as statesman and mystic, compensated for his successful pressure upon Rome by helping to send to the stake, notwithstanding the Emperor's safe-conduct, the pure-hearted Huss. The result was that, even before the time of Major, the expectation, so long cherished by Europe, of a great reform through a great Council had died out. And the University of Paris, instead of continuing to act in place of that coming Council as 'a sort of standing committee of the French, or even of the universal, Church,'[3] had become a reactionary and retarding power. It opposed Humanism, and was the stronghold of the method of teaching which the new generation knew as 'Sophistry.' It opposed Reuchlin, and was preparing to oppose Luther, and to urge against its own most distinguished pupils the law of penal fire. It continued to oppose the despotism of the Pope,