“For clerks of our own day follow more readily the schools of Antichrist than Christ, are rather given to gluttony than glosses; they collect pounds rather than read books…now all learning goes cheap, all reading is half-hearted; there is no-one who reads books: ‘There is not even one; all fall off, and all alike are made unprofitable.’ Now the school of Christ is deserted; it is concerned with two things, with life and with learning, but the true life is despised, and learning is buried. Once, even though the good life was not loved, yet learning was embraced. But now exorbitance, obstinacy, and alienation are at their height, when not only good behavior is set aside, but also what befits it, that is learning, is despised.” Alan of Lille, The Art of Preaching, trans. Gillian R. Evans (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1981), 139. 
Alan of Lille was a teacher and theologian in the schools of Paris in the second half of the twelfth century. In this text he lamented the focus on material gain and not real learning at what would become the University of Paris in 1200. Glosses were the study notes based on the lectures of Parisian teachers on famous texts of the Bible or other works. Alan criticized his contemporaries’ love of the temporal life above the eternal truths of theology.
