A history of the University of Oxford

by George C. Brodrick

Early schools of Oxford

The silence of Domesday Book respecting the University of Oxford must be taken as presumptive, though by no means conclusive, proof that it had no corporate existence at that date. Much learning has been spent in speculations on its origin and primitive constitution, but these speculations have little support in any facts historically known to us before the Norman Conquest. It is more than probable, however, that Oxford was already a resort of students and a place of education. Having been a residence of Edmund Ironside, Canute, and Harold I., as well as the seat of several National Councils, it was now recognised as a provincial capital by the erection of its castle, embracing within it the Collegiate Church of St. George; while the number of its monastic establishments would naturally attract poor scholars from all parts of England. The earliest schools, not in England only but throughout Europe, were attached to monasteries or cathedrals; and, in the absence of any contrary evidence, analogy almost compels us to regard the Church as the foster-mother of the University. In the ‘claustral’ schools of St. Frideswide, and the houses in Oxford belonging to abbeys, such as those of Abingdon and Eynsham, we may discern the original seminaries of academical teaching—the first rudiments of the Studium Generale, afterwards developed into the Universitas Literaria. On the other hand, it is certain that, side by side with these claustral schools, secular or lay schools were gradually opened—some boarding-schools, mainly designed for the reception of boys from the country, others mere classrooms frequented by the students who lodged either in private dwellings or in public hostels. It appears that before long the secular outnumbered the claustral schools, and became centred in a particular quarter of the city, stretching northward from the west end of St. Mary’s Church, afterwards known as School Street, and said to have existed in the year 1109. We may surmise with some confidence that in the infancy of the University its lecturers were almost exclusively clerks, but too often scholastic adventurers of mean attainments, whose lessons rose little above the barest elements of knowledge. But all theories of its rudimentary organisation are purely conjectural. ‘The Schools of Oxford’ first emerge into history in the next century, when they really attained a national celebrity, soon eclipsing those of Canterbury, Winchester, Peterborough, and others, which may have rivalled them in earlier times.

Intellectual revival of the twelfth century

The twelfth century, the golden age of feudalism and the Crusades, was also marked by a notable movement of thought and revival of speculative activity. The culture and science which had long found a home at Cordova now began to diffuse themselves over Western Europe, and the works of Avicenna introduced a curious relish for Aristotle’s ‘Natural Philosophy,’ which veiled itself in mysticism to escape ecclesiastical censure. The old scholastic Trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, with the mathematical Quadrivium, comprising arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, still constituted the magic circle of ‘Arts’ in the mediæval sense. But the ‘sciences,’ as they were then called, of physics, Roman law, and systematic theology, if not medicine, were now claiming a place in the curriculum of education; and valuable histories, in the form of chronicles, were compiled in several English monasteries. That age cannot be called intellectually barren which produced Lanfranc, Anselm, Abelard, Bernard, Peter the Lombard, Averroes, Gratian, and Maimonides. The University of Bologna, with its School of Law, opened by Irnerius under imperial patronage, was among the first fruits of this mediæval renaissance. The cultivation of Roman jurisprudence is usually dated from the discovery of a copy of the Pandects at the capture of Amalfi in 1135, but it cannot have been wholly unknown at an earlier period, since the religious orders had been forbidden by a Papal mandate to study it. The lectures of Irnerius, however, apparently preceding the capture of Amalfi, methodised and popularised the new learning, which spread rapidly through Western Europe.

Lectures of Vacarius, and first germs of the University

There is historical evidence of Vacarius, a professor from Bologna, having commenced lectures in civil law at Oxford, under the patronage of Archbishop Theobald, about 1149, in the reign of Stephen, by whom they were prohibited for a while at the instance of teachers interested in philosophy and theology. This is the earliest well-ascertained event in the academical life of Oxford, but it may safely be inferred that if Vacarius came from Italy to lecture in the schools of Oxford, those schools had already attained something like a European reputation, and were fitted to become the germ of an University.[1] We have the positive testimony of John of Salisbury, who had studied at Paris, that Oxford, just before the accession of Henry II., was engrossed by logical controversies about the nature of Universals. Yet this concourse of eager students apparently possessed no chartered rights. There is no sufficient ground for the assertion that Henry I. was educated at Oxford, and granted some important privileges to the so-called ‘University;’ but we know that he lived much both at Oxford and at Woodstock, that he built the palace of Beaumont on the north of the city, and that he demised to its corporation the fee farm of the city for the annual rent of sixty-three pounds. Nor can it be proved, as it has been alleged, that, having sunk again to a low ebb under Stephen and Henry II., it was revived by the judicious patronage of Richard I., himself born at Beaumont. On the other hand, starting from the fact that the Oxford schools attracted a professor from Italy in the reign of Stephen, we are justified in believing that they could scarcely have escaped the notice of Henry I., who earned a name for scholarship in that unlettered era, and is said to have ‘pleased himself much with the conversation of clerks;’ or of Stephen, who twice held Councils at Oxford; or of Henry II., who, like his grandfather, constantly resided in the immediate neighbourhood. Without the encouragement of the Crown as well as of the Church, they could not have attained the position which they clearly occupied before the end of the twelfth century. By this time Oseney Abbey had been founded, and had annexed the church of St. George within the Castle. Both of these religious houses served as lodgings for young scholars, who contributed to swell the number of Oxford students. It is true that we have no trace of academical endowments, or of royal charters recognising the Oxford schools, in the twelfth century. But we are informed on good authority that Robert Pullen (or Pulleyne), author of the Sententiarum Libri Octo, and for some years a student at Paris, delivered regular courses of lectures on the Scriptures at Oxford some years before the visit of Vacarius. More than a generation later, in the year 1186 or 1187, Giraldus Cambrensis, having been despatched to Ireland by Henry II. as companion of Prince John, publicly read at Oxford his work on the Topography of Ireland. According to his own account, ‘not willing to hide his candle under a bushel, but to place it on a candlestick, that it might give light to all, he resolved to read it publicly at Oxford, where the most learned and famous of the English clergy were at that time to be found.’ These recitations lasted three successive days, and the lecturer has left it on record that he feasted not only ‘all the doctors of the different faculties and such of their pupils as were of fame and note,’ but ‘the rest of the scholars,’ with many burgesses and even the poor of the city. Whether or not the schools thus frequented at Oxford were mainly founded by the Benedictines, as has been maintained, and whether or not they were mainly conducted by teachers from Paris, they assuredly existed, and constituted an University in all but the name.

Connection of Oxford with the University of Paris

It is no longer doubtful that, in their earliest stage, the schools of Oxford owed much to those of Paris, then in a far more advanced state of development, though not formally incorporated into an ‘University’ until early in the thirteenth century. William of Champeaux had opened a school of logic at Paris so far back as 1109. His pupil, Abelard, followed him; and the fame of Abelard himself was far surpassed by that of Peter Lombard, whose text-book of ‘Sentences’ became the philosophical Bible of the Middle Ages. Students flocked in from all parts of Europe; lectures multiplied, not only in one faculty, as at Bologna or Salerno, but in every branch of mediæval study, especially in those comprised under ‘Arts;’ a system of exercises, degrees, academical discipline, and even college life, was gradually matured; and when Philip Augustus gave the new academical guild his royal approval, it was already in a condition of vigorous activity. In this sense, the growth of the University of Paris was spontaneous. Like that of Oxford, it was originally nothing but an association of teachers united by mutual interest; but, like all mediæval institutions, it grew up under Church authority. It had originally sprung from the cathedral school of Notre-Dame; the ecclesiastical chancellor of Paris claimed a paramount jurisdiction over it, which, however, was constantly resisted by the University, not without support from the Court of Rome; and the validity of its highest degrees was derived from the sanction of the Pope himself. Considering the links which bound England to France, through Normandy and her other French provinces, as well as the intellectual ascendency of Paris over Western Europe, it is natural that Oxford should have borrowed many features of her internal regulations from this source, though it cannot be affirmed with certainty that she did so. The presumption is strongly confirmed by the undoubted fact that the ‘English nation’ was one of the four ‘nations’ into which the students of Paris were divided, the Normans forming another distinct nation by themselves. Leland tells us that young Englishmen who then aspired to a high education got their schooling, as we should call it, at Oxford, but their college training at Paris, and Anthony Wood gives a list of eminent Oxonians who had studied at Paris, including the names of Giraldus Cambrensis, Robert Pulleyne, Robert Grosteste, Roger Bacon, and Stephen Langton. If this be so, it was inevitable that, on their return, they should bring home with them ideas based on their experience of Paris, which might thus gradually become a model of academical organisation for Oxford. In the year 1229, a fresh link of connection with the great French University was created by a large immigration of Parisian students. The immediate cause of this immigration was an outbreak of hostility between the scholars and citizens of Paris, like those which so constantly recurred between the same parties at Oxford. Henry III. had the foresight to seize this opportunity of reinforcing his own University, and among the many students who came from Paris to Oxford on his invitation were several of his own subjects who had gone abroad for their education.

Recognition of the scholars by the Papal Legate after the riot of 1209

At all events, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, we find at Oxford an academical body singularly like that long established at Paris, and exhibiting almost equal vitality. In one respect, indeed, its position was still more independent; for, whereas at Paris the University was overshadowed by a Royal Court with all the great dignitaries of the French Church and State, at Oxford the University authorities had no competitors but the corporation of the city. Moreover, while at Paris there was a resident chancellor of Notre-Dame, ever ready to assert his authority, there was no episcopal see of Oxford; the diocesan lived at a safe distance, and the archdeacon was the highest resident functionary of the Church. About the beginning of the thirteenth century, Edmund Rich, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, and Robert Grosteste, afterwards bishop of Lincoln, became pioneers of Aristotelian study in Oxford, and were among the earliest graduates in divinity, a faculty then in its infancy. In the year 1214 we come upon more solid ground in a documentary record preserved in the archives of the University. This record, in the shape of a letter from the Papal Legate, refers to an important incident which had occurred five years before, in 1209, when three students had been seized and hanged by a mob of townspeople, with the mayor and burgesses at their head, in revenge for the death of a woman accidentally killed by another student. In consequence of this outrage, said to have been countenanced by King John, the city was laid under an interdict by the Pope, who issued a prohibition against lecturing in Oxford, and the great body of students migrated to Cambridge, Reading, or elsewhere. The letter of the Papal Legate, reciting the submission of the burgesses to his authority, and his disposition to deal mercifully with them, proceeds to impose upon them certain penalties. One of these is the remission of half the fixed rent payable for halls tenanted by scholars, for a period of ten years. Another is the payment of fifty-two shillings yearly for the support of poor scholars, and the obligation to feast one hundred poor scholars every year on St. Nicholas’s Day. They are also to swear that, in future, they will furnish the scholars with provisions at a just and reasonable price; and that if they shall arrest a clerk they shall deliver him up, upon due requisition from the bishop of Lincoln or the archdeacon of Oxford, or his official, or the chancellor, or ‘him whom the bishop of Lincoln shall have deputed to this office.’ This oath is to be repeated yearly. All masters who continued to lecture after the retirement of scholars under Papal mandate are to be suspended from lecturing for three years. All townsmen convicted of participation in the original crime are to come, without shoes, hats, or cloaks, to the graves of the murdered ‘clerks,’ and are to give their bodies proper burial in a place to be solemnly chosen. Upon any default in the fulfilment of these conditions, the former sentence of excommunication is again to be enforced by the bishop of Lincoln.