“By the counsel of S. Neot the Abbot, was the first to establish schools for the various arts at Oxford; to which city he granted privileges of many kinds.”
And from that time the myth was repeated and grew.
But if King Alfred did not found the University who did? or how did it come into existence?
Briefly the case stands thus. Before the second half of the twelfth century—the age of Universities—there are no discoverable traces of such a thing at Oxford, but in the last twenty years of that century references to it are frequent and decided. The University was evidently established, and its reputation was widely spread.
There abounded there, contemporaries inform us, “men skilled in mystic eloquence, weighing the words of the law, bringing forth from their treasures things new and old.” And the University was dubbed by the proud title “The Second School of the Church.”
She was second, that is, to Paris, as a school of Theology, and to Paris, the researches of modern experts like Dr Rashdall lead us to believe, she owed her origin.
The Universities, the greatest and perhaps the most permanent of Mediæval Institutions, were a gradual and almost secret growth. For long centuries Europe had been sunk in the gloom of the Dark Ages. The light of learning shone in the cloister alone, and there burned with but a dim and flickering flame. In Spain not one priest in a thousand about the age of Charlemagne could address a common letter of salutation to another. Scarcely a single person could be found in Rome who knew the first elements of letters; in England, Alfred declared that he could not recollect one priest at the time of his accession who understood the ordinary prayers. Learning lay buried in the grave of Bede. At Court, emperors could not write, and in the country contracts were made verbally for lack of notaries who could draw up charters.
But towards the end of the eleventh century Europe began to recover from this state of poverty and degradation. Christendom had gained a new impulse from the Crusades. Trade revived and began to develop, some degree of tranquillity was restored, and the growing wealth of the world soon found expression in an increasing refinement of manners, in the sublime and beautiful buildings of the age of Cathedrals, and in a greater ardour for intellectual pursuits.
A new fervour of study arose in the West from its contact with the more cultured East. Everywhere throughout Europe great schools which bore the name of Universities were established.
The long mental inactivity of Europe broke up like ice before a summer’s sun. Wandering teachers, such as Lanfranc or Anselm, crossed sea and land to spread the new power of knowledge. The same spirit of restlessness, of inquiry, of impatience with the older traditions of mankind, either local or intellectual, that had hurried half Christendom to the tomb of its Lord, crowded the roads with thousands of young scholars, hurrying to the chosen seats where teachers were gathered together. A new power, says an eloquent historian, had sprung up in the midst of a world as yet under the rule of sheer brute force. Poor as they were, sometimes even of a servile race, the wandering scholars, who lectured in every cloister, were hailed as “Masters” by the crowds at their feet.