On the other hand, the poets were prohibited as redolent of paganism.

To mingle philosophy with rhetoric was counted a crime.

Thomas Aquinas had set up Pillars of Hercules beyond which the reason might not seek to travel.

Roman law had to be treated from the orthodox scholastic standpoint.

Woe to the audacious jurist who made the Pandects serve for disquisitions on the rights of men and nations! Scholars like Sigonius found themselves tied down in their class-rooms to a weariful routine of Cicero and Aristotle.