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for this reason the arts are dying out, to the point that only with
great effort do they know their part, which
is the book of grammar, the first of the seven arts.
Then they put the arts into their storage chests and take
up the study of laws or decretals. And so they
become lawyers and focus forever on earning money,
and the devil rejoices. They do not do this [ie. study] as much to learn
as to fill their purses. In Paris there
are clerks of a certain type, who as a rule want to
have the fame of being masters renowned for their skill
in the law. They would rather know little and have
the name of master, than be good clerics without
having that name. But they are wrongly called masters.
For they are mastered by vanity to such a degree that
they know little of truth. And for this reason, as soon as
they gain the name of master, they leave the clerical
profession and start earning money just as
merchants or brokers do. And so there are few men
in the world who have the name of master but very few
who know anything of reason and goodness. For those