What Church and Empire had both aimed at and both failed in, the knitting of Christian nations together into a vast commonwealth, the Universities for a time actually did.

Dante felt himself as little a stranger in the "Latin" quarter round Mont St.
Genevieve as under the arches of Bologna.

Wandering Oxford scholars carried the writings of Wyclif to the libraries of Prague.

In England the work of provincial fusion was less difficult or important than elsewhere, but even in England work had to be done.

The feuds of Northerner and Southerner which so long disturbed the discipline of Oxford witnessed at any rate to the fact that Northerner and Southerner had at last been brought face to face in its streets.