Interesting stories are told of the efforts made by such men as Cosmo de' Medici to gain possession of classical manuscripts.

The revival of learning thus brought about had its first permanent influence in the fields of literature and art, but its effect on science could not be long delayed.
Quite independently of the Byzantine influence, however, the striving for better intellectual things had manifested itself in many ways before the close of the thirteenth century.

An illustration of this is found in the almost simultaneous development of centres of teaching, which developed into the universities of Italy, France, England, and, a little later, of Germany.
The regular list of studies that came to be adopted everywhere comprised seven nominal branches, divided into two groups--the so-called quadrivium, comprising music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy; and the trivium comprising grammar, rhetoric, and logic.

The vagueness of implication of some of these branches gave opportunity to the teacher for the promulgation of almost any knowledge of which he might be possessed, but there can be no doubt that, in general, science had but meagre share in the curriculum.

In so far as it was given representation, its chief field must have been Ptolemaic astronomy.