authoritative work. In England, Bracton wrote his great book on the common law, which brought logic and order into a rather empirical system and made it a worthy rival of the law of Rome. The unknown author of the Summa de legibus performed the same service for Norman law, and Accursius summarized and codified all the work of the commentators on Roman law. In other fields, Guillaume Durand wrote a definitive work on the significance of the ritual of the Church, and Jacopo da Voragine compiled an encyclopedia of legends of the saints.
The greatest and most lasting intellectual achievement of the thirteenth century was in the field of theology. Here its work has not been superseded; scholars are still discussing the ideas and praising the insights of men like Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura. As in other fields, there was an urge to be encyclopedic, to discuss and summarize all previous work in theology. But the great scholars of the thirteenth century went far beyond this; they attempted to make a harmonious whole out of all the ideas and knowledge of their time. All doubtful problems were resolved; all conflicts between the new learning and the Christian faith were settled; everything was integrated into a complete philosophy of the relations of nature and of man with God. Such a feat could be attempted only in a period in which men felt sure that everything made sense, that there was a pattern in the universe which they could discern and explain.
The greatest of the medieval theologians was Thomas Aquinas, but it is well to remember that his Summa Theologica was based on the work of many other men. As a Dominican he profited from the scholarly activity of older members of his order and especially from the teaching of Albertus Magnus, who possessed almost as universal a mind as Thomas himself. Born in Italy, educated in Germany, a teacher at Paris, Thomas Aquinas knew the theologians and the schools of Western Europe. Yet his own genius took him beyond his predecessors and his contemporaries. The mere organization of his great book is an amazing achieve-
