But it is true, in supporting the higher schools the Church did not aim at science as its ultimate object; it was her view that science should serve the material welfare of man, but still more the highest ethical and religious purpose of life. This in general was the conception of the entire Middle Ages. At that time it would have been considered curious to seek a science ultimately for its own sake. And the universities repaid the Church by gratitude and devotion. The effort has been made to demonstrate that the modern separation of science from religion had already begun in the Middle Ages, and had showed itself everywhere; this tendency for autonomy “appeared at first only timidly and in manifold disguises” (_Kaufmann_, 14). How easy it is to find such disguises may be shown by an example. The university of Paris had after the death of _St. Thomas_ asked for his remains. _Kaufmann_ holds that the notion of the autonomy of science had found sharp expression in the memorandum wherein the university stated the motive of its request. Now how does this harmless document sound? “Quoniam omnino est indecens et indignum ut alia ratio aut locus quam omnium studiorum nobilissima Parisiensis civitas quae ipsum prius educavit nutrivit et fovit et post modum ad eodem doctrinae monumenta et ineffabilia fomenta suscepit ossa ... habeat.... Si enim Ecclesia merito ossa et reliquias Sanctorum honorat nobis non sine causa videtur honestum et sanctum tanti doctoris corpus in perpetuum penes nos habere in honore.” Evidently the university requests the relic for itself, or rather for the Parisiensis civitas, not in opposition to the Church, but in opposition to other cities, altera natio aut locus. I wonder if the Parisian admirers of St. Thomas ever dreamed that they would one day be put in the light of forerunners of liberal science, because of their pious application for the bones of their great teacher? This is tantamount to carrying one’s own idea into the fact. _Denifle_, probably the most competent judge of the affairs of mediæval universities, writes as follows: “If we weigh the different acts which suggest themselves to us in these various foundations, and if we compare them with one another, there is revealed to us, in the realm of history of the foundation of mediæval universities, a wonderful harmony between Church and State, between the spiritual and material. This is the reason why the universities of the Middle Ages appear to us as the highest civil as well as the highest ecclesiastical teaching institutions. Fundamentally, they are the product of the Christian spirit which penetrated the whole, wherein Pope and Prince, clergy and laity, each held the proper position” (l. c. p. 795).