In the twelfth century, Paris was the educational center of Europe, with a large number of schools and masters attracting and competing for students. Over the decades, the schools of Paris had many critics--monastic reformers, humanists, satirists, and moralists--and the focus of this book is the role such critics played in developing the schools into a university. Ferruolo argues that it was the educational values and ideas promoted by the critics--ideas of the unity of knowledge, the need to share learning freely and willingly, and the higher purposes and social importance of education--that first inspired the scholars of Paris to join together to form a single guild. Their programs for educational reforms can be seen in the first set of statues promulgated for the nascent University of Paris in 1215.