In the fourteenth century the university was as renowned as ever. Among many tributes from great scholars we choose that of Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham, who in his _Philobiblon_ writes: "O Holy God of gods in Zion, what a mighty stream of pleasure made glad our hearts whenever we had leisure to visit Paris, the Paradise of the world, and to linger there; where the days seemed ever few for the greatness of our love! There are delightful libraries more aromatic than stores of spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manners of volumes; there are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars; there are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of all arts and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the nodes of the planets by figures and numbers; there Paul reveals the mysteries; there his neighbour Dionysius arranges and distinguishes the hierarchies; there the virgin Carmentis reproduces in Latin characters all that Cadmus collected in Phoenician letters; there indeed opening our treasures and unfastening our purse-strings we scattered money with joyous heart and purchased inestimable books with mud and sand." In 1349 the number of professors (_maistres-regents_) on the rolls was 502: in 1403 they had increased to 709, to which must be added more than 200 masters of theology and canon law. "The University," wrote Pope Alexander IV. in a papal bull, "is to the Church what the tree of life was to the earthly Paradise, a fruitful source of all learning, diffusing its wisdom over the whole universe; there the mind is enlightened and ignorance banished and Jesus Christ gives to His spouse an eloquence which confounds all her enemies." But already decadence had set in. The multiplication and enrichment of colleges proved fatal to the old democratic vigour and equality. Some colleges pretended to superiority and the movement lost its unity. Scholasticism had done its work and no new movement took its place. Teachers lost all originality and did but ruminate and comment on the works of their great predecessors. Schools declined in numbers and scholars in attendance. Ordinances were needed to correct the abuses covered by the title of scholar. The Jacobin and Cordelier teachers, moreover, had exhausted much life from the university; but its fame continued, and Luther in his early conflicts with the papacy appealed against the pope to the university. But it made the fatal blunder of opposing the Reform and the Renaissance, instead of absorbing them, and the interest of those great movements centres around the college of France. CHAPTER VII THE PARLEMENT--THE STATES-GENERAL--CONFLICT WITH BONIFACE VIII.--THE DESTRUCTION OF THE KNIGHTS-TEMPLARS