RISE OF THE SPIRIT OF INQUIRY. As the cathedral schools grew in importance as teaching institutions, and came to have many teachers and students, a few of them became noted as places where good instruction was imparted and great teachers were to be found. Canterbury in England, Paris and Chartres in France, and several of the cities in northern Italy early were noted for the quality of their instruction. The great teachers and the keenest students of the time were to be found in the cathedral schools in these places, and the monastic schools now lost their earlier importance as teaching institutions. By the twelfth century they had been completely superseded as important teaching centers by the rapidly developing cathedral schools. To these more important cathedral schools students now came from long distances to study under some noted teacher. Says McCabe: [11] The scholastic fever which was soon to influence the youth of Europe, had already set in. You could not travel far over the rough roads of France without meeting some footsore scholar, making for the nearest large monastery or cathedral town. Robbers, frequently in the service of the lord of the land, infested every province. It was safest to don the coarse frieze tunic of the pilgrim, without pockets, sling your little wax tablets and stylus at your girdle, strap a wallet of bread and herbs and salt on your back, and laugh at the nervous folk who peeped out from their coaches over a hedge of pikes and daggers. Few monasteries refused a meal or a rough bed to the wandering scholar. Rarely was any fee exacted for the lesson given.