When at the end of the twelfth century the universities first emerged in Italy, Spain, and France, the culture of monastic learning was already centuries-old and clearly defined. Indeed, it was the monasteries’ lively discourse on the place and purpose of study in the years after the Gregorian reform that gave form and focus to the emerging intellectual program of the new, secular schools. Europe’s monasteries did not react to the rise of the universities; rather, they were active in their evolution, shaping their learned culture with a mature syllabus of their own. Secular masters fashioned an image which was set self-consciously in opposition to the professed path of humility. Yet as a corporate, and later collegiate, body, these masters found much inspiration in the monastery, from its cloister, a purpose-built study space, to its morning schedule of teaching and its seasonal circulation of books. In their turn, the schools extended the intellectual horizons of the monks and equipped them to participate in the clerical culture of the institutional Church.