The youth Rashi has now completed his apprenticeship; in his studies and travels he has amassed a vast store of information, which he will use for the profit of his contemporaries and of posterity; and he now believes himself in possession of sufficient knowledge and experience to strike out for himself. Moreover, he must now provide for his family-we have seen that he married while still a student. But he does not give up his studies. His change of abode was the only change in his life, a life of remarkable unity, the life of a student. Rashi gave himself up entirely to study, to study without cessation, and to teaching; but teaching is only a form of pursuing one's studies and summing them up. I Detailed and comprehensive though the Talmudic studies were, nevertheless the student, especially if he was gifted, completed the course when he was not much more than twenty years of age. Rashi, then, was probably close to twenty-five years old when he returned from Mayence. This return marks an epoch in the history of rabbinical literature. From that time, the study of the Talmud was cultivated not alone upon the banks of the Rhine, but also in Champagne, which came to rival and soon supplant Lorraine, and having freed itself from the subjection of the Rhenish schools, radiated the light of science. Jews from all over Christian Europe gathered there to bask in the warmth of the new home of Jewish learning. Less than ten centuries earlier, the same thing had happened when Rab transplanted the teaching of the Law from Palestine to Babylonia, and founded an academy at Sura, which, for a while rivalling [rivaling sic] the Palestinian schools, soon eclipsed them, and finally became the principal centre [center sic] of Jewish science. The Kabbalist was not so very far from the truth when he believed that the soul of Rab had passed into the body of Rashi. It is noteworthy that this upgrowth of Talmudic schools in Champagne coincides with the literary movement then beginning in Christian France. In emerging from the barbarous state of the early middle ages, it seems that the same breath of life quickened the two worlds. The city of Troyes played an especially important role in matters intellectual and religious. A number of large councils were held there, and the ecclesiastical school of Troyes enjoyed a brilliant reputation, having trained scholars such as Olbert, Pierre Comestor, Pierre de Celle, and William of the White Hands. And it was near Troyes that the mighty voices of Abelard and Saint Bernard resounded.