The man of learning, then just differentiated from the ecclesiastic, spent the greater part of his life in earning his intellectual wares from Court to Court and from University to University, just as the merchant personally carried his goods from city to city in an age in which commercial correspondence, bill-brokers, and the varied forms of modern business were but in embryo.

It was then that travel really meant education, the acquirement of thorough and intimate knowledge of diverse manners and customs.

Travel was then not a pastime, but a serious element in life.
In the same way the spread of a political or social movement was at least as rapid then as now, and far more penetrating.

The methods were, of course, vastly different from the present; but the human material to be dealt with was far easier to mould, and kept its shape much more readily when moulded, than is the case nowadays.

The appearance of a religious or political teacher in a village or small town of the Middle Ages was an event which keenly excited the interest of the inhabitants.