and the introduction into Europe of some of the Arabian writings on geometry and physics was opening the door to the development of mathematical science. But the flower of intellectual and scientific enquiry was destined to be nipped in the bud by the blighting influence of scholasticism. Already among the pupils of Abelard was numbered Peter Lombard, the future author of "The Sentences," a system of the doctrines of the Church, round which the dogmatic theology of the schoolmen, trammelled by a rigid network of dialectics, was to grow up. It was the light before a dawn which never broke into day. But as yet the period was one of awakening and promise. Students from all parts crowded to Paris, and the Faculty[14] of Arts in the University was divided into four "nations"--those of France, Picardy, Normandy and England. John of Salisbury became famous as one of the Parisian teachers. Becket wandered to Paris from his school at Merton. After spending twelve years at Paris, John of Salisbury, the central figure of English learning in his time, finally returned to England. S. Bernard recommended him to Archbishop Theobald, and in the archbishop's household at Canterbury he found in existence a very School of Literature, where scholars like Vacarius came to lecture on civil law, where lectures and disputations were regularly held, and men like Becket and John of Poictiers were trained. "In the house of my Lord the Archbishop," writes Peter of Blois, "are most scholarly men, with whom is found all the uprightness of justice, all the caution of providence, every form of learning. They after prayers and before meals, in reading, in disputing, in the decision of causes constantly exercise themselves. All the knotty questions of the realms are referred to us...." This archiepiscopal school was in fact a substitute for the as yet undeveloped Universities. Besides this school there were, in England, schools in connection with all the great Cathedral establishments and with many of the monasteries as well as the houses of the nobles. There were, for instance, great schools at S. Alban's and at Oxford. But these _studia_ were not _studia generalia_; they were schools merely, not Universities. It was perhaps to the school which had sprung up in connection with S. Frideswide's monastery that Vacarius lectured, if he lectured at Oxford at all.