The degree and extent of elementary and secondary education upon which the university instruction was necessarily founded, have been the subject of several recent studies. It seems certain that schools for children and youth existed from the ninth century onward in cathedral and other centers and that, as Lynn Thorndike says, “in the period of developed medieval culture elementary education was fairly wide-spread and general.”[21] Without entering into the details of this program, illuminating as they are, we note that the curriculum was founded upon the Latin language and Latin studies. The contemporary growth of towns involved an expansion of education which was marked by the appearance of schools sponsored by municipal authority. The Latin school flourished everywhere. There is evidence that every social class participated to some extent in the new education although illiteracy must at the same time have been common. It seems clear that the layman who had received these early educational advantages could understand Latin hymns or read them if the texts were available. Both sexes shared elementary education and lay women as well as nuns occasionally had access to advanced instruction. Such considerations as the above presuppose a degree of familiarity especially with the breviary hymns, on the part of laymen, even if singing or chanting was restricted to the choirs and clergy. The university movement was accompanied by the rise of the wandering scholars and poets whose verses, for example, from the _Carmina Burana_, are familiar today in translation. Popular entertainers, they sang their Latin lyrics at ale house doors and in the market places. They must have been at least partially understood by the populace. Other municipal entertainment was provided by the religious drama of the times which made considerable demand upon the Latin resources of the spectator who had to be somewhat bilingual if he were to enjoy the public presentation of the mystery plays. Again, the bilingual or macaronic poetry which sprang up in the period of rivalry between Latin and the vernacular may be viewed both as a means and a result of understanding Latin hymns. Macaronic verse was both secular and religious in its forms, favorite phrases from well-known Latin hymns often being combined with the vernacular tongue. The practice might even have spread to the ritual of the Church had it not been forbidden by ecclesiastical decree.[22] The _cantio_ of the later medieval centuries and the familiar carol offer a wealth of evidence that macaronic religious verse was extremely popular. Indeed, this may have been the earliest manifestation of actual hymn singing on the part of medieval laymen.