Story 2 (2 of 2): Italian.

So, that one Italian professor also presented strong evidence that the Christian exegete Origen was a greatly-admired philosopher, even among non-Christian neo-Platonists, and when I asked her in the Q&A period if his reputation showed the professionalization of philosophy among Christians, she agreed to that description, and said that within 150 years it was all over since the growing ecclesiastical power of the church cracked down on theological investigation/research.

That night at another reception I ran into my one Dutch prof, who was only able to attend the first half of the lecture, and when I told her about the professionalization-and-decline narrative, she was like, "That sounds very Italian," and when I laughed, she was like, "But it does, you have to remember, they have to deal with the Vatican."