Note 102 — Chapter XX · : The Monastery of St. Aliquis: The Activities of Its Inmates. Monastic Learning.

It is perhaps proper to say that Dante (1265-1321), a person, of course, of remarkable intellect, was able to master the entire fund of learned information and science available in his time. This was not true of the next great mediæval scholar, Petrarch (1304-71). By his period the supply of human knowledge had become too vast for any one brain. Petrarch had to become a specialist.