FOOTNOTES:
[8] This is the date assigned to the statute by Mr. Anstey in his Munimenta Academica, on the authority of Anthony Wood, supported by historical probability.
CHAPTER VI.
THE UNIVERSITY IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
Decline in numbers and studies
The golden age of mediæval Oxford had culminated in the fourteenth century, and the fifteenth century ushered in a period of intellectual stagnation, which lasted for at least sixty years. Many causes, both external and internal, combined to produce this result. The nation itself, exhausted by the vain effort to conquer France, and roused from its long dream of Imperial ambition, was hopeless and disheartened until it was plunged into the most sanguinary of English Civil Wars. The ecclesiastical independence of the English Church, which had defied the most powerful of mediæval Popes, and had been fortified by the recent Statutes of Provisors and Præmunire, was seriously threatened by the growth of Ultramontane influences, while its revenues were assailed by democratic agitation. The revolutionary petition of the Commons, addressed to Henry IV., for the wholesale appropriation of Church property to secular and charitable uses, boded no good to Universities, which ranked as ecclesiastical bodies, and were taxed with the clergy, though anti-monastic in their corporate spirit and in the organisation of their colleges. Moreover, this petition had been speedily followed by the actual confiscation of property belonging to alien priories. Soon afterwards, the French Wars and Wars of the Roses attracted into camps many a student who might otherwise have frequented the University lecture rooms; the law no longer drew all its recruits from University clerks; and even the incumbents of English livings were sometimes chosen from the ranks of the regular clergy without University training. It is possible that the rise and spread of the Wycliffite movement at Oxford may have prejudiced it in the eyes of the English hierarchy, as it certainly did in those of the Popes. At all events, there is abundant evidence both of the fact that candidates for Holy Orders resorted to Oxford in diminished numbers, and of the construction which the University authorities put on that fact. In 1417, and again in 1438, the Archbishop and Bishops in Convocation issued an appeal to patrons of benefices, calling upon them to give a preference to University graduates. The memorial addressed to Convocation on behalf of the University in 1438 complains that her halls were deserted, and that not one thousand remained out of the many thousands reported to have attended the schools of Oxford in the last age—when, as we learn from a Royal charter (of 1355), ‘a multitude of nobles, gentry, strangers, and others continually flocked thither.’ It is stated that in 1450 only twenty out of two hundred schools which had once been filled continued to be used for purposes of education. A few years later we find a license granted to poor scholars, authorising them to beg for alms—a practice of which Sir Thomas More speaks as if it were not obsolete in his own time. It was to meet the necessities of these destitute students that Archbishop Chichele established a new University Chest; and it was for the relief of the pauperes et indigentes, no less than for the support of the secular clergy, whose decline at Oxford is amply attested by his charter, that he afterwards founded the great college of All Souls.
University delegates at the Councils of Constance and Basle
Notwithstanding this decline, and the undoubted decay of learning, we must not exaggerate either the actual degeneracy of the University or its loss of reputation in Europe. No doubt, the French Wars tended to weaken its ancient alliance with the great University of Paris, and the growth of a native English literature under the inspiration of Chaucer and Wyclif may well have contributed to its isolation, until it came under the spell of the Italian Renaissance. But it is an error to assert that Oxford was ‘nowhere to be found in the great Church Councils of the fifteenth century.’[9] On the contrary, it was very ably represented, both at Constance in 1414 and at Basle in 1431. At the former of these Councils, Henry de Abendon, afterwards Warden of Merton, defended with signal effect the claim of England to precedence over Spain, and of Oxford to precedence over Salamanca. In order to defray the expense of sending ‘orators’ to Basle, the University, in its poverty, solicited a contribution, ‘were it ever so small,’ from the Convocation of the Clergy. It found a worthy delegate, however, in John Kemp, also of Merton, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, who, at the subsequent Council of Florence, was made a Cardinal by the Pope.
Foundation of Lincoln and All Souls’ Colleges
Nor must we forget the great collegiate institutions which owe their origin to this obscure period. The first of these, Lincoln College, was founded in 1427, on a much humbler scale than New College, by Richard Flemmyng, Bishop of Lincoln, who, having been a zealous promoter, became a fanatical opponent of Wyclif’s doctrines, and distinguished himself at the Council of Siena by attacks against the Hussites. His main object was to extirpate the Wycliffite heresy, and he specially provided that any Fellow tainted with these heresies was ‘to be cast out, like a diseased sheep, from the fold of the college.’ All Souls, founded in 1438 by Archbishop Chichele, was a far grander monument of academical piety and was almost unique in its constitution. The college was specially designed to be a chantry, but it was also to be a place of study, and was to some extent modelled on New College, where Chichele himself was educated. There were to be forty scholars, being clerks, bound to study without intermission, twenty-four of whom were to cultivate Arts and philosophy or theology, and sixteen the canon or civil law. Magdalen College was founded in 1457 by William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, upon a plan borrowed from New College, but without the peculiar feature of organic connection with a public school, though its founder had been himself the head-master both of Eton and of Winchester. There are clear traces in the statutes of the coming Renaissance. Theology remains supreme, as at New College, but moral and natural philosophy take the place of civil and canon law. Grammar is preferred to logic, and even Latin verses are recognised. Moreover, the lecturers in divinity and the two philosophies are to instruct not only the college but the whole University.
Extension of University buildings: the Divinity School and the Bodleian Library
While the collegiate system was thus expanding, and classical scholarship was beginning to germinate under its shelter, the resources of the University were enriched by two important accessions—the edifice of the Old Schools, and the Library presented by the ‘good’ Duke Humphry of Gloucester. In the early part of the fifteenth century, thirty-two ‘schools’ were ranged along School Street, between the west end of St. Mary’s and the city wall, near the present theatre. These schools had superseded the simple chambers which the University had a prescriptive right to hire in the houses of private citizens. Many of them belonged to Oseney Abbey, and in the year 1439 some fourteen of these, being ruinous, were taken down and rebuilt by the Abbot, Thomas Hokenorton. The fabric erected by him is described as a long pile of stone masonry, wholly destitute of architectural effect, consisting of two stories, and divided into ten schools, five above and five below, which, however, possessed no monopoly of University lectures or exercises, since these continued to be carried on in other public schools, if not in private lecture rooms, despite prohibitory statutes. One reason why School Street was selected as the privileged quarter for lecturing was doubtless that it immediately adjoined St. Mary’s Church, which contained the old Congregation-house, in which the University held all its solemn meetings, and which, in the Middle Ages, had served at once as the court-house, the legislative chamber, the examination-room, the public treasury, the hall of assembly, and the place of worship, for the whole University. In this church theological lectures had now been given for a century, since the Dominicans and Franciscans had been compelled to abandon their practice of teaching divinity to University students within their own walls, and the University could afford to despise the rivalry of other religious Orders lodged in the suburbs, at a distance from School Street. In 1426 or 1427 a vacant plot was purchased by the University from Balliol College, and in 1480 the present Divinity School was finally opened for the greatest of the faculties, by the aid of liberal contributions from the Benedictine monks, Archbishop Chichele, several cathedral bodies, Duke Humphry, and the executors of Cardinal Beaufort, Archbishop Kemp, and Edmund Duke of Somerset of 1447. In the meantime, Duke Humphry, acceding to a suggestion from the University, had initiated the erection of a Public Library over the Divinity School. The building was retarded by the withdrawal of the masons, under Royal mandate, for works at Windsor and Eton, nor was it completed till 1480, by the aid of Thomas Kemp, Bishop of London, who contributed 1,000 marks, and has been regarded as a second founder. The original collection of books presented by Duke Humphry to the University in 1439 consisted of 129 volumes only, but it was supplemented by a second gift in 1443. Still, the whole University Library, comprising the previous legacies of Angerville and Cobham, is said to have contained no more than 500 volumes when it was dispersed at the Reformation. Duke Humphry is also said to have instituted a professorial Chair for Arts and Philosophy, which, however, never came into operation, perhaps because the means were not forthcoming to endow it adequately. For it is certain that at this period the resources of the University were miserably small, and chiefly wasted in the enormous expense of suits at the Court of Rome, whose appellate jurisdiction it had always respected, and whose immediate intervention it often invoked.[10]
Final organisation of mediæval lectures and examinations
The mediæval system of academical studies and examinations may be considered to have reached its maturity in the middle of the fifteenth century. At this period the University enjoyed comparative repose, and its constitution was fully organised, though its vigour, as we have seen, was grievously impaired. Nine colleges had already been founded, and, by the statute passed in 1432 for the suppression of ‘chamber-dekyns,’ all members of the University were required to be inmates of some college or hall, except those who should be specially licensed by the Chancellor to live in lay houses. By another statute of the same year, the discipline of the University had been further secured by a peremptory rule that all principals of halls should be graduates, or qualified by learning and character to rule their respective households.[11] The proctorial authority was now firmly established under the ordinance of 1343. Courses of public lectures were constantly delivered on all the subjects recognised by the University in the official schools, and private instruction was supplied to their own inmates by the various colleges and halls.
University curriculum
The institution of an University curriculum, or a set course of books or subjects to be studied by candidates for degrees in the various faculties, may be dated from the statutes given to the University of Paris by the Cardinal Legate, Robert de Courçon, at the very beginning of the thirteenth century. The Oxford curriculum seems to have varied but little between the age of the schoolmen and that of the Renaissance. It is practically certain that admission to the University was guarded by no entrance examination. Grammar was treated as the essential foundation of all knowledge, and the University abounded in grammar schools, but the superstructure raised upon this foundation appears to have been mainly logical. Both grammar and logic, however, represented accomplishments which in that age were supposed to be useful—grammar as giving the power of reading and writing Latin; logic, supplemented by rhetoric, as the instrument of controversy and persuasion. Since proficiency in all studies was tested by disputation, logic was naturally elevated into a position of supremacy. A statute passed in 1408 required all candidates for what is now called a B.A. degree to become ‘sophistæ generales,’ and practise themselves in logical disputations for a year at least in the ‘Parvisum,’ or classrooms for beginners, before offering themselves for the preliminary ordeal of Responsions. This examination seems to have consisted in arguing and answering questions on a given thesis (respondere ad quæstionem or de quæstione), and the student who had passed it at the end of his first year was still bound under this statute to hear lectures on prescribed books in three branches of the Faculty of Arts—logic, mathematics, and grammar, which always ranked lowest in the scale of studies. The exercises which constituted ‘determination’[12] were conducted during Lent in the schools of Masters apparently selected by the candidates themselves, for the last clause in the statute actually protects them against impressment or solicitation by Masters desirous of forcing them into their own schools. The examination was mainly, if not exclusively, logical and grammatical, the duty of the examining master being to stop the candidate if he should wander into other subjects or use unsound arguments. Nothing is said in this statute of candidates once admitted to determine being rejected for incompetence, but there are rules to prevent their being admitted at all, unless duly qualified by character, ability, age, and even stature.
Statute of 1431, regulating ‘inception’
The leading statute which regulated the more important act of ‘inception,’ or admission to the M.A. degree, was passed in 1431. It opens with a somewhat pedantic and solemn preamble, setting forth that everyone who aspires to be entitled a Master or Professor of Arts ought to have undergone a complete training in the seven sciences and the three philosophies. These seven sciences were no other than the old Trivials and Quadrivials which had become the standard subjects of education ever since the revival of learning under Charlemagne—grammar, rhetoric and logic; arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy. The three so-called philosophies were natural, moral, and metaphysical. The statute proceeds to ordain that all who are presented for ‘inception’ shall have satisfied all the requirements for ‘determination,’ and shall also have regularly and earnestly attended lectures in the seven branches of knowledge here called the seven liberal Arts, as well as in the three philosophies, during eight years for at least thirty ‘reading’ days in each year,[13] according to a certain graduated order prescribed in the statute itself. Thus, grammar was to occupy one year, rhetoric three years, logic three years, arithmetic one year, music one year, geometry two years, astronomy two years, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysical philosophy three years each. The orthodox text-books in which each subject is to be studied are specifically mentioned, and include Priscian, Boethius, and Euclid, but, above all, Aristotle, who is recognised as the supreme authority on rhetoric, logic, and all three philosophies.
Duties of regent masters
Having fulfilled all these conditions, and procured all the necessary certificates of his moral and intellectual competence, the bachelor applying for a M.A. degree was presented before the Chancellor and Proctors in Congregation, when, after taking certain oaths, one of which bound him not to foment quarrels between Northerners and Southerners, he was officially licensed to deliver lectures. On this ceremony, which constituted him a Master of Arts, the statute of 1431 is silent, but we know from other sources that a M.A. degree was chiefly, if not exclusively, sought as a passport to ‘inception.’ This inception, which involved much expense[14] and was attended by many formalities, consisted in taking possession of a school, and solemnly commencing a course of lectures as a teaching or ‘regent’ master. It is provided in the statute that at the end of every term (or year) the proctors shall ascertain the number of regent masters willing to lecture, and shall divide them according to seniority, into ten companies as nearly equal in number as possible. The junior company, with the superintendents of grammar schools, are to lecture in grammar, and the rest are apparently to be so ranged in an ascending scale that the highest subjects may be assigned to the seniors. It is expressly ordained, in order to exclude forbidden lore, that none shall lecture in any books except those allowed by statute. The mode of lecturing is also strictly prescribed. First, the text is to be read out, then its substance and meaning are to be explained; afterwards special passages are to be noted, and lastly, questions are to be raised and discussed, but only such as naturally arise out of the text, so that no prohibited sciences may be taught. Such provisions for public lecturing were necessary before either an University professoriate or a system of college tuition was developed, and all regent masters, unless exempted, were statutably bound to lecture for nearly two years after inception. During this period they were also specially bound to attend the University ‘Congregation,’ by which degrees were granted, and even when they became non-regents they were liable to be summoned for this purpose by the University Bedel, who sounded a bell in order to make a quorum; whence that assembly was technically called the House of Regents and Non-Regents. In the earliest times, when it consisted of teachers only, it had been the sole legislature of the University. It seems, however, that when degrees were more and more sought as titles of honour or certificates of proficiency, and graduates frequently obtained exemptions from the duty of teaching, another more select body, called the ‘Black Congregation,’ assumed the right of discussing measures to be afterwards laid before the ‘Great Congregation,’ as it then came to be called, or ‘Convocation,’ as it was called in later times, when the preliminary assembly had at last usurped the name of ‘Congregation.’
Residence for degrees in the higher faculties
The faculty of Arts, however, was but one of several, though it embraced the great majority of graduates, and maintained an undisputed supremacy. The ‘science’ of grammar always filled a subordinate position, and its requirements were less onerous, but in all the superior faculties of civil or canon law, medicine, and theology, the ordinary rule was to have graduated first in Arts, and afterwards to have responded, disputed, and determined in the studies of the faculty before incepting and receiving the final degree of Master or Doctor, then practically synonymous. Even those who had graduated in Arts were required to study theology five years before their ‘opponency’ or degree-examination, while those who had not so graduated were compelled to go through a seven years’ course; and in either case two years more of probation were exacted before permission could be obtained to lecture on the ‘Sentences.’ Thus an Oxford career occupied far more of life in those days than in our own, and academical residence certainly extended over a greater part of each year. It was a natural consequence that University influences left a far deeper impress on the characters and minds of the students, and that such movements as the Renaissance and the Reformation passed through a long period of academical incubation before they acquired a hold over the mass of the nation.