Position of the friars at Oxford, and University statutes against them
It is extremely difficult to ascertain the nature of the control which the friars acquired over academical studies, or the place, if any, which they occupied in the academical system. Of their proselytising activity we have abundant evidence, and this was probably the motive of their constant efforts to secure the privilege of reading and lecturing in their own schools, instead of in those of the University; efforts which at Paris seem to have been more or less successful. At Oxford they are clearly recognised as religious bodies in a curious ordinance of 1300, which enjoins that in academical processions the Preaching Friars shall walk first, the White Friars next, and the Black Friars last. It is scarcely less significant that, although in 1314 the church of St. Mary was made the one authorised arena of academic ceremonies, to the exclusion of the religious houses, the four Orders were represented jointly with the University on the Papal Commission which delivered this decision. In another statute, of 1326, every bachelor of arts is required to dispute once and respond once each year before the Augustins (apud Augustinenses), from which it must be inferred that this Order had already acquired almost a monopoly of grammar-teaching.
But the lay and secular element in the University always rebelled against the encroachments of the friars, and was destined to prevail. It is a suggestive fact that Walter de Merton rigorously excluded every ‘religious’ person or member of a monastic Order from the benefits of his foundation. Soon afterwards the University took alarm. In 1358[8] we have a trenchant statute against the abduction of boys under eighteen by the mendicant Orders, which shows how great a jealousy they had provoked among the secular clergy of the University, for whose special benefit Merton and other colleges were founded. This statute expressly recites that noblemen and commoners are afraid to send their sons to the University, lest they should be seduced by the mendicant friars into joining their Order before arriving at years of discretion; and that by these practices the peace of the University is often disturbed and its numbers diminished. It is therefore enacted that if any mendicant friar thus seduces or causes to be seduced any youth under eighteen years of age, or procures his removal from Oxford with intent that he may be received elsewhere into a religious Order, no graduate of the cloister or society to which the offender belongs shall be allowed to deliver or attend lectures in Oxford during the year next ensuing. Another statute of the same date is apparently aimed at the attempt of friars to lecture on logic before undergoing the regular yearly course of disputations. This is immediately followed by the public recantation extorted from a friar who had affirmed, among other startling propositions, that tithes belonged more properly to mendicants than to rectors of churches, and that the University was a school of heresy. Another friar who had disparaged the School of Arts was compelled to apologize with equal humility. Still the power of the monastic Orders continued to be formidable, and at Cambridge they seem to have ultimately carried their point in obtaining exemption from academical exercises in Arts for their theological students; while at Oxford there are many instances of college fellows joining their ranks.
Intervention of the Pope and the King
In 1365 the Pope entered the lists against the University on behalf of the friars, and directed the Archbishop of Canterbury and bishops to insist upon the Chancellor’s procuring the repeal of the obnoxious statutes. In the meantime, however, the intervention of the King and Parliament was invoked by memorials from both the Universities and the four mendicant Orders. In consequence of this an ordinance was made, with the assent of Parliament, by which the statutes against the admission of scholars into these Orders were relaxed, but all bulls and processes to be procured by the friars against the Universities from the Court of Rome were prohibited and declared void. Still the feud continued. One main source of Wyclif’s popularity in the University was his unsparing denunciation of the Mendicants, and their decline was among the most permanent results of the movement which he initiated. But other causes were at work to undermine their influence. The rise of the colleges was, in fact, the rise of the secular clergy, and in organising itself more completely, the University naturally outgrew its dependence on the missionary zeal for education which had been its life-blood in the thirteenth century.
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