Having sketched thus far the development of the office which represents the power and dignity of the University, we may now turn to consider the position of the young apprentices from their earliest initiation into this guild of learning.
The scholars of mediæval Universities were your true cosmopolitans. They passed freely from the University of one country to that of another by virtue of the freemasonry of knowledge. Despising the dangers of the sea, the knight-errants of learning went from country to country, like the bee, to use the metaphor applied by S. Athanasius to S. Anthony, in order to obtain the best instruction in every school. They went without let or hindrance, with no passport but the desire to learn, to Paris, like John of Salisbury, Stephen Langton or Thomas Becket, if they were attracted by the reputation of that University in Theology; to Bologna, if they wished to sit at the feet of some famous lecturer in Civil Law. Emperors issued edicts for their safe conduct and protection when travelling in their dominions—even when warring against the Scots, Edward III. issued general letters of protection for all Scottish scholars who desired to repair to Oxford or Cambridge—and when they arrived at their destination, of whatever nationality they might be, they found there as a rule little colonies of their own countrymen already established and ready to receive them. Dante was as much at home in the straw-strewn Schools Street in Paris as he would have found himself at Padua or at Oxford, had he chanced to study there.
It has indeed been suggested that he did study there in the year 1313. Like Chaucer, he may have done so, but probably did not. There is certainly a reference to Westminster in the “Inferno” (xii. 119); but it is not necessary to go to Oxford in order to learn that London and Westminster are on the banks of the Thames.
In attending lectures at a strange University the mediæval students had no difficulty in understanding the language of their teachers. For all the learned world spoke Latin. Latin was the Volapuk of the Middle Ages. Mediæval Latin, with all its faults and failing sense of style, is a language not dead, but living in a green old age, written by men who on literary matters talked and thought in a speech that is lively and free and fertile in vocabulary. The common use of it among all educated men gave authors like Erasmus a public which consisted of the whole civilised world, and it rendered scholars cosmopolitan in a sense almost inconceivable to the student of to-day. That was chiefly in the earlier days of Universities. Gradually, with the growth of national feeling and the more definite demarcation of nations and the ever-increasing sense of patriotism, that higher form of selfishness, cosmopolitanism went out of fashion. Nowadays only two classes of cosmopolitans survive—in theory, free traders, and in practice, thieves.
I have spoken of the dangers of the sea; they were very great in those days of open sailing boats, when the compass was unknown; but the dangers of land-travelling were hardly less. The roads through the forests that lay around Oxford were notoriously unsafe, not only in mediæval days but even a hundred years ago. Armed therefore, and if possible in companies, the students would ride on their Oxford pilgrimage. If they could not afford to ride, the mediæval pedagogue, the common carrier, would take them to their destination for a charge of fivepence a day. For there were carriers who took a regular route at the beginning of every University year for the purpose of bringing students up from the country. They would have a mixed company of all ages in their care. For though students went up to Oxford as a rule between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, many doubtless were younger and many older. It was indeed a common thing for ecclesiastics of all ages to obtain leave of absence from their benefices in order to go up to the University and study Canon Law or Theology there. You can fancy, then, this motley assembly of pack-horses and parish priests, of clever lads chosen from the monasteries or grammar schools, and ambitious lads from the plough, all very genuine philosophers, lovers of learning for its own sake or its advantages, working their way through the miry roads, passed occasionally by some nobleman’s son with his imposing train of followers, and passing others yet more lowly, who were just trudging it on foot, begging their way, their bundles on their shoulders.
You can fancy them at last coming over Shotover Hill, down the “horse path” past S. Clement’s, and so reaching safely their journey’s end. Once in Oxford, they would take up their abode in a monastery to which they had an introduction; in a college, if, thanks to the fortune of birth or education, they had been elected to share in the benefits of a foundation; as menials attached to the household of some wealthier student, if they were hard put to it; in a hall or house licensed to take in lodgers, if they were foreigners or independent youths. On taking up his residence in one of these halls, the mediæval student would find that Alma Mater, in her struggles with the townsmen, had been fighting his battles. Lest he should fall among thieves, it had been provided that the rents charged should be fixed by a board of assessors; lest the sudden influx of this floating population should produce scarcity, and therefore starvation prices, the transactions of the retailers were carefully regulated. They were forbidden to buy up provisions from the farmers outside the city, and so establish a “corner”; they were forbidden even to buy in Oxford market till a certain hour in the morning. The prices of vendibles were fixed in the interests of the poor students. Thus in 1315 the King ordained that “a good living ox, stalled or corn-fed, should be sold for 16s., and no higher; if fatted with grass for 14s. A fat cow, 12s. A fat hog of two years old, 3s. 4d. A fat mutton, corn-fed or whose wool is not grown, 1s. 8d. A fat mutton shorn, 1s. 2d. A fat goose, 2d. A fat hen or two chickens, one penny. Four pigeons or twenty-four eggs, one penny.”
The halls were, at any rate originally, merely private houses adapted to the use of students. A common room for meals, a kitchen and a few bedrooms were all they had to boast. Many of them had once belonged to Jews, for they were large and built of stone. And the Jews, being wealthy, had introduced a higher standard of comfort into Oxford, and at the same time, being a common sort of prey, they probably found that stone houses were safer as well as more luxurious. Moysey’s Hall and Lombard’s Hall bore in their names evident traces of their origin. Other halls derived their names from other causes. After the great fire in 1190 the citizens, in imitation of the Londoners, and the Jews, had rebuilt their houses of stone.
