Humanity has been the richer for St.Francis; and Abelard, Albertus and Aquinas form a trio not easy to match, in their special departments, either before or after.

But in science, and particularly in medicine, and in the advance of an outlook upon nature, the thirteenth century did not help man very much.

Roger Bacon was "a voice crying in the wilderness," and not one of the men I have picked out as specially typical of the period instituted any new departure either in practice or in science.

They were servile followers, when not of the Greeks, of the Arabians.

This is attested by the barrenness of the century and a half that followed.