In the next generation two distinct tendencies present themselves. Anselm of Aosta, Lanfranc’s successor alike at Bec and Canterbury, defended the traditional position of the Church with a wider learning and deeper insight than his predecessor. Anselm has been called both the last of the fathers and the first of the schoolmen. But while his motive was the same as that of the later schoolmen, his methods were somewhat different, and his enduring fame is not for the acuteness of his dialectic, so much as for his broad insight into the deeper problems of philosophy and his anticipation of positions that were not fully taken up until the reign of scholasticism was over. [Sidenote: Anselm and Roscelin.] The Realism of which he was the upholder was part of the earlier tradition of the ecclesiastical schools. Much more epoch-making, though not in itself altogether original, was the Nominalism of Roscelin, the true parent of scholastic philosophy. While Anselm only saw in philosophy the way of justifying the Church’s teaching, Roscelin’s logical nominalism led him to deny the possibility of the Trinity in Unity and teach undisguised Tritheism. But he argued as a logician and not as a divine, and in 1092 acquiesced in the recantation which was presented to him by a council at Soissons. From the controversies of Anselm and Roscelin all the later intellectual activity sprang. Early in the twelfth century there were many schools and masters scattered through central Europe and particularly in northern Gaul. [Sidenote: Activity of the schools.] Of one of the least of these schools and scholars it could be said that ‘clerks flocked from divers countries to hear him daily; so that if thou shouldst walk about the public places of the city and behold the crowds of disputants, thou wouldst say that the citizens had left off their other labours and given themselves to philosophy.’[13] There was no order or method in study. Any one could teach who had learnt under an accredited master and had received the Church’s licence. The students followed the masters, and the centres of study fluctuated as reputations were made and destroyed. But at this period there were three chief schools in northern France, all closely connected with the cathedrals of the respective towns. The teaching of Anselm of Laon (a scholar of St. Anselm) made that city a great centre of theological lore. The dialectical renown of William of Champeaux brought crowds of students to the cathedral schools of Paris. The literary enthusiasm of the Breton Platonist, Bernard Sylvester, and of his successor, William of Conches, made the cathedral school of Chartres ‘the most abundant spring of letters in Gaul.’[14]