The rise of the schoolmen or moderni in the twelfth century 
made a sharp break with the ancients of traditional Christian 
scholarship.

*     We have seen how Marrou had shown that, thanks to 
Augustine, Bible study incorporated the ancient egkuklios  
paideia  or encyclopedic program of grammatica  and rhetorica  
as it reached definition at the hands of Cicero. Thus it was 
scriptural exegesis that ensured the continuity of classical 
humanism in the monastic schools from Augustine to Erasmus. 
But the rise of the universities in the twelfth century 
constituted a radical break with the classical tradition. The 
program of the new universities was much centred in dialectica  
or scholastic method which had had a heyday at Rome as we 
read in S. F. Bonner’s Roman Declamation  (p. 43):