The instruction for those who took up higher branches of study, students who were for the greater part destined for the Church, was naturally, during the manuscript period, carried on by the priests, not only because but few others possessed anything that could be called scholarship, but also because it was only in the collections of the monasteries (the _armaria_) that the requisite manuscripts could be found. It is true that with the beginning of the 13th century, the educational work of the earlier universities, such as Bologna, Paris, and Oxford, begins to assume importance; but even in the universities, outside of the faculties of law and of medicine, the direction of the instruction was retained very largely in the hands of the Church, the lecturers in the department of philosophy, for instance, being almost exclusively ecclesiastics. During the 13th century, there does come into existence a body of scholarship which is outside of the Church, but it remains the case that, up to the time of Luther, the great mass of the people had looked to Rome, and to teachers acting under the authority of Rome, for its light and leading, intellectual as well as religious. The association of education and intellectual training with the Church is in fact fairly indicated by the use of the term “cleric.” In 1516, the leaders of the Reformation, in beginning their long contest against the abuses of the Church of Rome, a contest which soon developed into a fight for the complete overthrow of the papal supremacy, promptly availed themselves of the power of the printing-press. While the words spoken in the pulpit or in the market-place could reach at best but a few hundred of hearers the tracts poured forth from the Wittenberg presses, the “flying-leaves” (_Flüg-schriften_), carried the teachings of Luther and Melanchthon to many thousands, and it was through the influence of these “winged words” (_epea pteroenta_) that the revolt developed into a revolution.