This sort of reasoning, however, was exceptional. In the mid-twelfth century the appearance of Peter Lombard’s _Sententiae_ tended to divert the theologian’s mind from Platonic and rationalistic studies and to restore Church Fathers and Scripture to paramount authority.[581] We look in vain for traces of the liberal attitude of the Chartres scholars in the orthodox works of such prolific writers but perhaps less clear thinkers as Peter Comestor, Giraldus Cambrensis, Gervase of Tilbury or even Alexander Neckam. Giraldus’ _Symbolum electorum_[582] contains a cosmography in verse which explains the Scriptural view of the Works of the Six Days, and though we feel in this poem the influence of the Peripatetic physics—which by this time were becoming universally known—no attempt was made to expound the work of the Creation according to physical laws. In the _Topographia Hiberniae_[583] Giraldus illustrates his own attitude and the dominant attitude of his age by the moral he draws from the story of eagles which occasionally fly so high that they scorch their wings in the sun. This he compared to the hopeless vanity of the man who tries to solve by reason or by knowledge God’s riddles of the Creation and of the universe. Neckam also despairs of explaining the mysteries of nature and asks, “Who may comprehend the causes of things?” He describes thunder and lightning briefly but adds, “The herald of the thunder fills the mind with terror and shows how great is the creator thereof.”[584] Even Michael Scot, who enjoyed the patronage of the enlightened, scientifically minded Emperor Frederick II, attributed the fact that the waters of the spherical earth are held in place to “a secret virtue ... beyond human ken and merit” (Haskins).[585] Gervase of Tilbury reproduces uncritically in his _Otia imperialia_[586] the ideas compiled by Peter Comestor regarding the Creation. These were strictly correct opinions on which no suspicion of heterodoxy could be thrown. Comestor went out of his way to express opposition and antagonism to Platonic teachings. EFFECTS OF INFLUX OF ARABIC SCIENCE