Unremitting self-discipline was necessary for anyone who wished to persevere on the path to wisdom. But how could one be sure that one was on the right path? The danger of false tracks that might lead one astray was preached from every pulpit. The ultimate goal for every medieval Christian, wisdom was more highly valued than mere knowledge. To us a fuzzy-edged fusion of book-learning and experience, sapientia, ‘wisdom’, was of a far higher order than mere scientia, ‘knowledge’. Sapientia, the divine wisdom through which the world had come into being, was Christ himself, ‘for he reveals the mysteries of knowledge and the secrets of wisdom’. The route to wisdom was thus hardly a matter of indifference: on it hung the very raison d'être of the Church. To hint that the Church's path might not be the only possible one was subversive, dangerous, potentially heretical — not an assertion to make lightly.

By the early centuries of the Middle Ages, Christianity had become a religion which did not readily tolerate a divergence of views in issues connected with belief. The multiplicity characteristic of earliest Christian belief rapidly gave way to dogma. Only a few generations after the founding of the Church its leaders felt called upon to codify the tenets of the Faith and to agree upon a uniform interpretation of potentially controversial passages in the Scriptures. Councils were held to pronounce on disputed points of dogma, creeds were formulated, and authoritative interpretations of the Scriptures were laid down.