This adaptation is published with the authorization of Professor Xu Shanwei. It is an AI-assisted contemporary editorial adaptation by Clio Walker, based on Xu’s book and sources actually consulted, using a first-person guide’s voice. It is neither a new personal travelogue by the professor nor a chapter-by-chapter reproduction. Authorization does not imply his individual approval of every additional interpretation.

At the end of a letter come two lines of jingle: wine for a trifle, bread for a trifle, meat for a trifle, fish for a trifle.

It was a recruiting letter, written around the end of 1229. It was signed by the masters and students of Toulouse and addressed to all the faithful of Christ, and especially to masters and students studying anywhere in the world. Tucked into a long list of attractions was the line that carried the most weight: the books on nature that had been banned at Paris could be heard here by anyone who wanted to search nature to its marrow.

The last story told how, in 1210, Samuel ibn Tibbon finished translating Aristotle’s Meteorology on board ship from Alexandria, the first Hebrew version of any work of Aristotle. That same year, in Paris, the Latin Aristotle was banned.

The books translated at the Toledo tables travelled north one by one, and in Paris they ran into a prohibition. That prohibition is what the Toulouse letter was using to lure students. Between the ban and the day those books were written into the Paris timetable, only forty-five years passed.

Hand Them In Before Christmas

In 1210 Peter of Corbeil, archbishop of Sens, met in Paris with the bishop of Paris and other bishops of his province. Their decisions read like a sentence handed down in court.

First, a dead man. Amalric had taught logic and the arts in Paris for many years before turning to theology. The council ordered his body dug up from the cemetery and thrown into unconsecrated ground, and every church in the province was to announce his excommunication.

Then the living. His followers were named one by one: priests, deacons, and a goldsmith. Some were stripped of their orders and handed to the secular court; others were stripped of their orders and imprisoned for life. A contemporary record says that some of them were burned in Paris.

Only then came the books. The notebooks of Master David of Dinant were to be brought to the bishop of Paris before Christmas and burned; anyone found with them after Christmas would be treated as a heretic. Theological books written in French, apart from the lives of saints, were to be handed to the bishops before the feast of the Purification in early February. Between those two orders stood Aristotle: his books on natural philosophy, and the commentaries on them, were not to be read in Paris, publicly or in secret, on pain of excommunication.

Aristotle’s books were not thrown on the fire. One chronicler of the time claimed the council ordered them all burned; Heinrich Denifle, who edited these documents, says flatly that this is wrong. Gerald of Wales, another contemporary, put it precisely: the books were forbidden to be read any further in the schools.

Any further matters. Another chronicle says these books on nature had begun to be read in Paris only a few years earlier. The new books had barely reached the classroom when they were stopped.

The council did not explain why exhumation, book-burning and Aristotle appeared in a single decree. The historian Hastings Rashdall thought the Amalrician heresy may have had other direct sources, but its outbreak goes far to explain why the arrival of the Arabic Aristotle was at first regarded with such alarm.

The Round Black Cape

Five years later, in August 1215, the papal legate Cardinal Robert of Courçon issued statutes for the masters and students of Paris. He wrote that he had a special mandate from the pope to reform the state of the Paris scholars.

The statutes were detailed. To lecture in arts at Paris a man had to be at least twenty-one, to have heard lectures in arts for at least six years, and to promise to lecture for at least two. Aristotle’s books on logic, old and new, were to be lectured on in the regular way. On feast days only the philosophers, rhetoric and the quadrivium might be read, and ethics “if one pleases.”

The next sentence is the ban. Aristotle’s books on metaphysics and natural philosophy were not to be read, nor summaries of them, nor the teachings of David of Dinant, the heretic Amalric and a few others. This time the Metaphysics was named. Denifle noticed that the council of 1210 had not distinguished it from the books on nature.

A little further on, the statutes turn to clothing. A master lecturing in arts was to wear a cape that was round, black and reaching to the heels, at least while it was new, and he was not to wear laced shoes under it. When a master died, all the masters were to keep vigil in the church until midnight, and on the day of his burial no one was to lecture or dispute.

Banned books and shoelaces sat in the same set of rules. To the people of the time, all of these were simply the regulations of the Paris schools.

One more detail is easy to miss. Both prohibitions applied only at Paris, a point Denifle made explicitly. That gap is exactly what the Toulouse letter would later exploit.

The Tavern at Saint-Marcel

What nearly broke up the Paris schools was a quarrel over a bar bill. It was 1229, the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, days when students customarily had leave to play. Some of them left the city for the village of Saint-Marcel, for the good air, we are told. After amusing themselves for a while they happened upon a tavern with excellent wine, very pleasant to drink.

As they drank, a dispute broke out with the tavern keepers over the price of the wine, and soon they were slapping one another and tearing at each other’s hair. The townsmen came running, freed the keepers from the clerks’ hands, and drove the students off well beaten.

The next day the students came back with swords and clubs, broke into a tavern keeper’s house, smashed every wine vessel and poured the wine across the floor. Then they went through the streets attacking any man or woman they met and left people half dead.

The prior of Saint-Marcel complained to the papal legate Romano and to the bishop of Paris, and the two went together to the queen who then held the government of the realm, Blanche of Castile. The English monk Matthew Paris recorded the affair. He says that, driven by a sudden impulse, she at once ordered the city’s provosts and some of her mercenaries to go out armed and punish the authors of the violence, sparing no one.

Once outside the gates, the soldiers found many students at play beyond the walls who had nothing to do with the previous day’s violence. Matthew says the troublemakers had come from the regions bordering Flanders, people commonly called Picards. The soldiers fell on the students all the same, killing some, wounding others and stripping them of their belongings. Some escaped and hid in vineyards and caves. Among the dead were two wealthy clerks of high standing, one a Fleming and the other a Norman. Henry Luard, who edited the chronicle, notes that a clerk with a mace and a citizen with an axe are drawn in the margin of the manuscript.

The masters first suspended lectures and disputations and went to the queen and the legate to demand justice. They got none. On 27 March 1229 twenty-one delegates chosen by the university laid down a decision: if satisfactory amends were not made within a month after Easter, no one would be allowed to stay in the city or diocese of Paris to study or teach for six years, and no one could return even after six years unless amends had been made. The document once carried twenty-one wax seals; today thirteen parchment tags and fragments of two seals remain.

They kept their word. Matthew says that not one famous master remained in the city. Most went to Angers; the well-known English masters later returned to England. Paris, which Matthew called the nurse of philosophy and foster-daughter of wisdom, emptied almost overnight.

A Letter to the Whole World

Toulouse lies southwest of Paris, close to six hundred kilometres away in a straight line. The recruiting letter was written in the year Paris emptied.

The Toulouse region had just been through a war against heresy. Gregory IX later looked back on it in a bull: the papal legate Romano had brought about peace between the Church and the count of Toulouse. Seeing that the Catholic faith seemed almost wiped out in those parts, he judged that it could flourish again only if a school were founded at Toulouse, and he ordained that studies in every lawful faculty be planted in the city, with the count promising the masters a fixed salary.

The letter did not hide from this past; it used it as a rallying cry. Where swords once cleared the way for you, fight with the sharpness of the tongue. Where slaughter once made men shudder, wage war with peaceful learning. Where the thorns of heresy once grew wild, let the cedar of the Catholic faith rise through you to the stars.

Then came the advantages, one by one. The papal legate had granted that all who studied or taught at Toulouse would receive full remission of their sins. The masters here lectured and disputed more diligently and more often than they had at Paris. The count of Toulouse guaranteed the masters’ salaries and the safety of students and servants on the road. Theologians taught their students in the pulpit and the people at the crossroads; logicians trained beginners in Aristotle; the physicians preached Galen. This was a promised land flowing with milk and honey, with green pastures and fruit trees in leaf, where Bacchus reigned in the vineyards and Ceres ruled the fields.

The crucial line sat in the middle of all this: the books on nature that had been banned at Paris could be heard here.

The letter survives because it was copied into a long poem by the English scholar John of Garland. We do not know how many students went south because of it. But its authors clearly assumed that reading banned books, like cheap wine, was a reason that would move students.

Mother of Sciences

The Paris deadlock was finally broken in Rome. In February 1230 Queen Blanche sent the Paris theologian William of Auxerre as royal envoy to Pope Gregory IX, who kept him at his side as an adviser on the conflict between the university and the citizens.

On 13 April 1231, at the Lateran palace in Rome, Gregory IX issued a bull addressed to all the masters and students of Paris. It opens by calling Paris the mother of sciences, a second Kiriath-sepher, the biblical “city of books,” a city of letters. Denifle later called this bull the Magna Carta of the University of Paris.

The bull gave the masters a real weapon. If masters or students suffered grave injury, such as death or mutilation, and no satisfaction was made within fifteen days of a warning, the university could suspend lectures until proper amends were made. It dealt with other matters too: students were not to be arrested for debt; the summer vacation was not to exceed a month; students were not to walk armed through the city; and those who pretended to be students but attended no classes and followed no master were not to enjoy students’ privileges.

Among all these clauses, one sentence concerned the books. The books on nature that the provincial council had banned “for a certain reason” were not to be used at Paris until they had been examined and purged of all suspicion of error. The theologians, for their part, were to work hard at their own subject and not show themselves off as philosophers.

The ban still stood, but it now came with the word “until.”

Seven days later, on 20 April, the pope wrote to the abbot of Saint-Victor and the prior of the Dominicans in Paris, telling them to absolve the masters and students who had fallen under the sentence of the provincial council or of Robert of Courçon on account of the books on nature, and to impose a suitable penance. Clearly, during those years, the banned books had not gone untouched.

Shave the Head, Cut the Nails

Three days after that, on 23 April, Gregory IX wrote to three men: William, archdeacon of Beauvais, that is, William of Auxerre; Simon of Authie, canon of Amiens; and Stephen of Provins, canon of Reims.

The letter begins with a principle. The other sciences ought to serve the wisdom of Holy Scripture, and the faithful should embrace them insofar as they obey their master; anything poisonous or corrupt in them that could harm the purity of the faith must be cast far away.

Then come two images, both from the Old Testament. A beautiful woman found among the captives may not be brought into the house until her hair has been shaved and her scratching nails cut. And when the Israelites left Egypt, what they were told to borrow from the Egyptians were precious vessels of gold and silver, not rusty bronze or clay.

Only then does he come to business. The books on nature banned at the provincial council of Paris are said to contain both useful and useless things. So that the useful should not be spoiled by the useless, the three were to examine those books carefully and prudently, cut away entirely whatever they found erroneous or liable to cause readers to stumble, and, once the suspect parts were removed, let the rest be studied at once and without offence.

What Gregory IX wanted was an expurgated edition: an Aristotle with his nails trimmed.

One of the three, Stephen of Provins, had an old connection to these books. In a note Denifle cites two manuscripts in which Michael Scot dedicated his translation of Aristotle’s On the Heavens to him: “To you, Stephen of Provins, I particularly commend this work.” Scot was the Scotsman who had translated at Toledo; Rashdall says his translations reached northern Europe shortly before 1230. If On the Heavens was among the books to be examined, then one of the examiners had once received a dedication of it. That is my own conjecture; the letter names no individual books.

The Expurgated Edition Never Arrived

Before the examination even began, things went wrong. On 6 May 1231 the pope urged the king of France to restore William of Auxerre to his teaching post at the university, so that he and Godfrey of Poitiers could reorganize the studies. But William never got out of Rome. He fell ill and died there on 3 November 1231, less than seven months after his appointment.

Scholars say the commission left no trace. No one has seen that Aristotle with the shaved head and trimmed nails.

The books did not stop moving. Rashdall says the theologians seem to have satisfied themselves quickly that the suspected works were harmless, or to have learned to tell the genuine Aristotle from spurious imitations. Xu Shanwei quotes the view that William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris from 1228 and the greatest representative of the conservatives, still acknowledged the value of Aristotle’s science and of the Arabic and Jewish philosophy built on it.

By the 1240s, teaching Aristotle’s natural philosophy and metaphysics in Paris was something done in the open. Roger Bacon was a master of arts in Paris around then, and scholars count him among the early masters who taught Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy and metaphysics. A scholar quoted by Xu says that by the middle of the thirteenth century these bans seem to have become a dead letter.

A Timetable Counted in Weeks

On 19 March 1255 the masters of the Paris arts faculty passed a statute unanimously. Its cause had nothing to do with the ban. Some masters, they complained, were rushing to finish their lectures before the bulk and difficulty of the books required, so that masters learned less by teaching and students less by listening. Anxious about the ruin of their faculty, they ruled that books begun on the feast of Saint Remigius, 1 October, had to be lectured on until the dates set below, and not finished earlier.

Then comes a timetable. Aristotle’s Physics, Metaphysics and the book On Animals were to run until the feast of John the Baptist on 24 June; On the Heavens and books one and four of the Meteorology until Ascension; On Generation until the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter on 22 February; On Sense six weeks; On Sleep and Waking five weeks; On Plants five weeks; On Memory two weeks; On Death and Life one week. More time was allowed, less was not. Anyone who broke the rule would face the indignation of the whole university and a year’s suspension from lecturing. The statute was sealed with the seals of the four “nations” of the university.

A modern syllabus tells students when a course begins. This one told masters the earliest date on which they were allowed to finish. Books that forty-five years earlier could not be read in public or in private now could not be cut short by a single week. The scholar Xu quotes says that by 1255 members of the arts faculty were in effect obliged to study every work of Aristotle they knew.

Two books on the list were not by Aristotle at all. One was the Book of Causes, which, Denifle notes, almost everyone at the time attributed to Aristotle. The other, On the Difference between Spirit and Soul, was written by Qusta ibn Luqa, an Arab Christian physician of the ninth and tenth centuries. John of Spain translated it from Arabic into Latin for Archbishop Raymond of Toledo, and manuscripts often carried it under the name of Constantine the African. The two figures from stories 14 and 15 of this column meet again here.

Epilogue

The ban was never formally lifted. In January 1263 Pope Urban IV confirmed Gregory IX’s statutes for the university clause by clause, and the clause forbidding the books on nature until they were examined was among them. By then the arts faculty’s timetable was eight years old. To me this looks more like recopying an old document than raising the ban again.

The real storm was still ahead. On 18 January 1277 Pope John XXI wrote to Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, saying he had heard rumours of heresy and asking him to look into them. About six weeks later, on 7 March, Tempier issued a list of 219 propositions and some books and prohibited them. This time the target was no longer a stack of foreign books but the views being discussed and disputed in the arts faculty itself.

Around the end of 1229 the masters of Toulouse put two pieces of bait in their recruiting letter: cheap wine, and banned books you could hear. Twenty-odd years later, in Paris, the second was nothing special any more.

(Next: The Arabs’ Aristotle)

Sources and editorial boundaries

1. Authorized base text: Xu Shanwei, Eastern Learning’s Westward Transmission and the Revival of Western Culture. Used: the passage on Christian philosophy and the import of Aristotle after the twelfth century; the passage on the translation of Aristotle and the Church’s bans (all of Aristotle translated into Latin from the mid-twelfth to the late thirteenth century; the 1210 ban on reading his natural philosophy and commentaries, publicly or privately, on pain of excommunication; the 1215 statutes approved by the papal legate forbidding arts masters to teach his natural philosophy and metaphysics; Urban IV’s renewal in 1263; the quoted view that “these prohibitions seem to have become a dead letter. In 1255 the members of the arts faculty were in practice obliged to study all the works of Aristotle they knew”; William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris 1228–1247, acknowledging “the value of Aristotelian science and of the Arabic and Jewish philosophy built on it”). Read. Quotations Xu draws from other scholars are given as “quoted by Xu,” since the original works are not in the text supplied. Xu calls the 1210 body a Paris “diocesan council”; the document shows a provincial council of Sens, which the story follows. Daniel of Morley (stories 4 and 6), the Boethius part of Xu’s Aristotle table (story 13), and the passages on Latin Averroism and Thomism reserved for story 18 are not used. 2. Heinrich Denifle and Émile Chatelain (eds.), Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, vol. 1 (Paris: Delalain, 1889); Internet Archive scan text read (archive.org/details/chartulariumuniv01univuoft). Documents used, all in Latin, paraphrased in the story: no. 11 (1210 council: Amalric’s body to be exhumed; followers degraded and handed to the secular court or imprisoned for life, including “Guillelmus de Arria aurifaber”; “Quaternuli magistri David de Dinant infra natale episcopo Parisiensi afferantur et comburantur, nec libri Aristotelis de naturali philosophia nec commenta legantur Parisius publice vel secreto, et hoc sub pena excommunicationis inhibemus”; French theological books to be handed in “infra purificationem”; editor’s notes on Amalric’s teaching, on Robert of Auxerre’s “ante paucos annos Parisiis coepisse lectitari,” on Gerald of Wales’s “Ne legerentur amplius in scolis sunt prohibiti … et quidem tantummodo Parisiis,” and on William the Breton’s erroneous “jussi sunt omnes comburi”); no. 12 (title: Amalric’s followers “Parisius igne examinati et consumpti sunt”); no. 20 (Courçon, August 1215: age, years of study and lecturing; “Non legantur libri Aristotelis de methafisica et de naturali philosophia nec summe de eisdem”; “capam nisi rotundam, nigram et talarem, saltem dum nova est … Sotulares non habeat sub capa rotunda laqueatos, nunquam liripipiatos”; vigils and no lectures on a master’s burial day; “liripipiatos” is left untranslated); no. 62 (27 March 1229: the six-year dispersal; editor’s note “Olim appendebant 21 sigilla cerea; restant adhuc 13 taeniolae membranaceae et fragmenta duorum sigillorum”); no. 72 (the Toulouse letter, c. end of 1229, preserved in John of Garland’s De triumphis ecclesiae, book 5: “ubi pridem gladii viam vobis fecere, pugnetis acumine lingue …”; the plenary indulgence; lecturing “diligentius et crebrius … quam … Parisius”; “Libros naturales, qui fuerant Parisius prohibiti, poterunt illic audire qui volunt nature sinum medullitus perscrutari”; the count’s guarantee “de salario nostro”; “Pro parvo vinum, pro parvo panis habetur, / Pro parvo carnes, pro parvo piscis emetur”); no. 79 (Parens scientiarum, Lateran, 13 April 1231: “velut altera Cariath Sepher, civitas litterarum”; suspension of lectures; debt, vacation, arms, false students; “libris illis naturalibus, qui in Concilio provinciali ex certa causa prohibiti fuere, Parisius non utantur, quousque examinati fuerint et ab omni errorum suspitione purgati”; theologians “nec philosophos se ostentent”); no. 86 (20 April 1231: absolution of those who fell under the sentences “occasione librorum naturalium”); no. 87 (23 April 1231: the commission, with the captive woman “rasa superfluitatis cesarie ac unguibus lacerantibus circumcisis” and the Egyptians’ “vasa aurea et argentea pretiosa non eruginosa enea vel lutea”; “quedam utilia et inutilia continere dicantur, ne utile per inutile vitietur … penitus resecetis”; editor’s note citing Michael Scot’s dedication “Tibi Stephane de Prouvino hoc opus … specialiter commendo”); no. 99 (27 April 1233: Gregory IX confirms the legate’s founding of studies at Toulouse after peace with the count, “quod fides catholica, que pene penitus videbatur de illis partibus profligata, inibi reflorere valeret”, and the count’s promised salary); no. 246 (arts statute dated “MCCLIV, die veneris ante Ramos palmarum,” i.e. 19 March 1255; the full timetable, “In minori autem non licebit … Plus tamen temporis licebit,” the penalty and the seals of the four nations; editor’s notes on the Liber de causis, “quem isto tempore fere omnes Aristoteli ascripserunt,” and on De differentia spiritus et anime, “auctor est Costa ben Luca saec. IX–X … Johannes Hispanus pro Raimundo archiepiscopo Toletano … transtulit … sub nomine Constantini Africani”); no. 384 (Urban IV, 19 January 1263, confirming Gregory IX’s statutes, including the passage “Ad hec jussit ut magistri artium, etc, usque terminari,” which contains the clause on the books on nature). 3. Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard, vol. 3 (Rolls Series 57, 1876), pp. 166–168; Internet Archive scan text read (archive.org/details/matthiparisiensi03pari). Used: the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, “propter aeris commoditatem,” “vinum optimum … et ad bibendum suave,” “alapas dare et capillos laniare,” the smashed wine vessels, the prior’s complaint, the queen’s order to the provosts and “ruptarii,” the innocent students outside the walls, the Picards, the vineyards and caves, the Fleming and the Norman, the suspension of lectures, “nec unus famosus ex omnibus in civitate remanserit,” Angers (the English masters’ later return to England is from Denifle’s note to Chartularium no. 62), “a nutrice philosophie et alumpna sapientie civitate Parisiaca,” and Luard’s note “A clerk armed with a mace and a citizen with an axe are drawn in the margin.” The remark about the queen’s impulse is Matthew’s own judgment. 4. Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1895), pp. 335–339, 356–359; read. Used: the 1229 riot and dispersal; the dispersal lasting through 1229 and 1230; Denifle’s “Magna Charta”; William of Auxerre as the king’s envoy; the heresy “goes far to explain the alarm with which the advent of the Arabic Aristotle was at first regarded”; the theologians “seem quickly to have satisfied themselves”; Michael Scot’s Toledo translations reaching northern Europe “shortly before 1230.” Rashdall’s statement that the 1210 ban was for three years is not in the text of no. 11 and is not used. 5. “William of Auxerre,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Gale, 2003; via encyclopedia.com); read. Used: death at Rome, 3 November 1231; royal envoy in February 1230; the commission of 23 April 1231; the pope’s letter of 6 May; “William fell ill and died before he could leave Rome to collaborate in the correction of Aristotle’s works.” 6. Christian Wenin, review of Ribaillier’s edition of William of Auxerre’s Summa aurea, Revue Philosophique de Louvain 82 (1984) (Persée); read. Used: “cette commission n’a pas laissé de trace, Guillaume étant mort l’année même de son institution, en 1231.” 7. Jeremiah Hackett, “Roger Bacon,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (rev. 2020); read. Used: master of arts at Paris in the 1240s, “one of the early Masters who taught Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy and metaphysics.” 8. J. M. M. H. Thijssen, “Condemnation of 1277,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (rev. 2023); read. Used: John XXI’s letter of 18 January 1277; Tempier’s list of 219 theses and some books on 7 March; about six weeks between the two; theses “discussed and disputed in the faculty of arts.” Motives and targets remain disputed and are not judged here. 9. “Pope Gregory IX,” Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 6 (1909; New Advent); read. Used: born c. 1145 at Anagni, died at Rome 22 August 1241; Cardinal Romanus sent as legate to assist Louis IX against the Albigenses; the Toulouse synod of November 1229. The entry says Gregory commissioned “William of Auvergne” to purge Aristotle; the original letter (no. 87) names William, archdeacon of Beauvais, i.e. William of Auxerre, and the story follows the document. 10. Wikidata Q124831 (Gregory IX; birth year given as 1170, unlike the Catholic Encyclopedia’s c. 1145), Q931898 (William of Auxerre); coordinates from Q90 (Paris), Q7880 (Toulouse) and Q848394 (Lateran Palace). 11. Editorial boundaries: no dialogue, thoughts or scenes are invented. Everything in quotation marks in the story is a paraphrase of the Latin or of the English sources, not a direct translation; the Latin is given in notes 2 and 3. “Some of them were burned in Paris” rests on the title of Chartularium no. 12; no casualty figures from other chronicles are used. “Forty-five years,” “less than seven months” and “eight years” are the editor’s arithmetic from the dated documents; “close to six hundred kilometres” (about 590 km) is computed from modern coordinates. The feasts of John the Baptist (24 June) and the Chair of Saint Peter (22 February) are fixed feasts; Saint Remigius (1 October) is from Denifle. “The banned books had not gone untouched” is an inference from the absolution letter. The Stephen of Provins dedication is documented; whether On the Heavens was among the books to be examined is the editor’s conjecture and is marked as such. That Urban IV’s confirmation looks like recopying is the editor’s view and is marked as such. That the Toulouse letter exploited the Paris-only scope of the ban is the editor’s connection. The 1277 epilogue gives only undisputed dates and numbers; the content of the propositions and their link to Averroes are left for the next story. 12. Base text check: Xu’s “Paris diocesan council” is, in the document, a provincial council under the archbishop of Sens; Xu’s statement on 1255 matches no. 246; Xu says Urban IV “renewed the 1210 ban” in 1263, while no. 384 shows him confirming Gregory IX’s 1231 statutes, which include the clause; the story follows the documents. 13. Map: 1210, the provincial council at Paris; c. end of 1229, the Toulouse letter (dated to the year); 13 April 1231, Parens scientiarum issued at the Lateran in Rome; 19 March 1255, the arts faculty timetable at Paris. Saint-Marcel (the 1229 riot; the old village has no precise coordinates), Angers (where many masters went) and Rome (William of Auxerre’s death, 3 November 1231) are left unmapped.