University of Oxford.
The opinion which ascribes the foundation of the university of Oxford to Alfred, if it cannot be maintained as a truth, contains no intrinsic marks of error. Ingulfus, abbot of Croyland, in the earliest authentic passage that can be adduced to this point,[n] declares that he was sent from Westminster to the school at Oxford, where he learned Aristotle, with the first and second books of Tully's Rhetoric.[o] Since a school for dialectics and rhetoric subsisted at Oxford, a town of but middling size and not the seat of a bishop, we are naturally led to refer its foundation to one of our kings, and none who had reigned after Alfred appears likely to have manifested such zeal for learning. However, it is evident that the school of Oxford was frequented under Edward the Confessor. There follows an interval of above a century, during which we have, I believe, no contemporary evidence of its continuance. But in the reign of Stephen, Vacarius read lectures there upon civil law; and it is reasonable to suppose that a foreigner would not have chosen that city, if he had not found a seminary of learning already established. It was probably inconsiderable, and might have been interrupted during some part of the preceding century.[p] In the reign of Henry II., or at least of Richard I., Oxford became a very flourishing university, and in 1201, according to Wood, contained 3000 scholars.[q] The earliest charters were granted by John.
University of Bologna.
Encouragement given to universities.
If it were necessary to construe the word university in the strict sense of a legal incorporation, Bologna might lay claim to a higher antiquity than either Paris or Oxford. There are a few vestiges of studies pursued in that city even in the eleventh century;[r] but early in the next the revival of the Roman jurisprudence, as has been already noticed, brought a throng of scholars round the chairs of its professors. Frederic Barbarossa in 1158, by his authentic, or rescript, entitled Habita, took these under his protection, and permitted them to be tried in civil suits by their own judges. This exemption from the ordinary tribunals, and even from those of the church, was naturally coveted by other academies; it was granted to the university of Paris by its earliest charter from Philip Augustus, and to Oxford by John. From this time the golden age of universities commenced; and it is hard to say whether they were favoured more by their sovereigns or by the see of Rome. Their history indeed is full of struggles with the municipal authorities, and with the bishops of their several cities, wherein they were sometimes the aggressors, and generally the conquerors. From all parts of Europe students resorted to these renowned seats of learning with an eagerness for instruction which may astonish those who reflect how little of what we now deem useful could be imparted. At Oxford, under Henry III., it is said that there were 30,000 scholars; an exaggeration which seems to imply that the real number was very great.[] A respectable contemporary writer asserts that there were full 10,000 at Bologna about the same time.[t] I have not observed any numerical statement as to Paris during this age; but there can be no doubt that it was more frequented than any other. At the death of Charles VII. in 1453, it is said to have contained 25,000 students.[] In the thirteenth century other universities sprang up in different countries; Padua and Naples under the patronage of Frederic II., a zealous and useful friend to letters,[x] Toulouse and Montpelier, Cambridge and Salamanca.[y] Orleans, which had long been distinguished as a school of civil law, received the privileges of incorporation early in the fourteenth century, and Angers before the expiration of the same age.[z] Prague, the earliest and most eminent of German universities, was founded in 1350; a secession from thence of Saxon students, in consequence of the nationality of the Bohemians and the Hussite schism, gave rise to that of Leipsic.[a] The fifteenth century produced several new academical foundations in France and Spain.
A large proportion of scholars in most of those institutions were drawn by the love of science from foreign countries. The chief universities had their own particular departments of excellence. Paris was unrivalled for scholastic theology; Bologna and Orleans, and afterwards Bourges, for jurisprudence; Montpelier for medicine. Though national prejudices, as in the case of Prague, sometimes interfered with this free resort of foreigners to places of education, it was in general a wise policy of government, as well as of the universities themselves, to encourage it. The thirty-fifth article of the peace of Bretigni provides for the restoration of former privileges to students respectively in the French and English universities.[] Various letters patent will be found in Rymer's collection, securing to Scottish as well as French natives a safe passage to their place of education. The English nation, including however the Flemings and Germans,[c] had a separate vote in the faculty of arts at Paris. But foreign students were not, I believe, so numerous in the English academies.
If endowments and privileges are the means of quickening a zeal for letters, they were liberally bestowed in the last three of the middle ages. Crevier enumerates fifteen colleges founded in the university of Paris during the thirteenth century, besides one or two of a still earlier date. Two only, or at most three, existed in that age at Oxford, and but one at Cambridge. In the next two centuries these universities could boast, as every one knows, of many splendid foundations, though much exceeded in number by those of Paris. Considered as ecclesiastical institutions it is not surprising that the universities obtained, according to the spirit of their age, an exclusive cognizance of civil or criminal suits affecting their members. This jurisdiction was, however, local as well as personal, and in reality encroached on the regular police of their cities. At Paris the privilege turned to a flagrant abuse, and gave rise to many scandalous contentions.[d] Still more valuable advantages were those relating to ecclesiastical preferments, of which a large proportion was reserved in France to academical graduates. Something of the same sort, though less extensive, may still be traced in the rules respecting plurality of benefices in our English church.
Causes of their celebrity.
Scholastic philosophy.
This remarkable and almost sudden transition from a total indifference to all intellectual pursuits cannot be ascribed perhaps to any general causes. The restoration of the civil, and the formation of the canon law, were indeed eminently conducive to it, and a large proportion of scholars in most universities confined themselves to jurisprudence. But the chief attraction to the studious was the new scholastic philosophy. The love of contention, especially with such arms as the art of dialectics supplies to an acute understanding, is natural enough to mankind. That of speculating upon the mysterious questions of metaphysics and theology is not less so. These disputes and speculations, however, appear to have excited little interest till, after the middle of the eleventh century, Roscelin, a professor of logic, revived the old question of the Grecian schools respecting universal ideas, the reality of which he denied. This kindled a spirit of metaphysical discussion, which Lanfranc and Anselm, successively archbishops of Canterbury, kept alive; and in the next century Abelard and Peter Lombard, especially the latter, completed the scholastic system of philosophizing. The logic of Aristotle seems to have been partly known in the eleventh century, although that of Augustin was perhaps in higher estimation;[e] in the twelfth it obtained more decisive influence. His metaphysics, to which the logic might be considered as preparatory, were introduced through translations from the Arabic, and perhaps also from the Greek, early in the ensuing century.[f] This work, condemned at first by the decrees of popes and councils on account of its supposed tendency to atheism, acquired by degrees an influence, to which even popes and councils were obliged to yield. The Mendicant Friars, established throughout Europe in the thirteenth century, greatly contributed to promote the Aristotelian philosophy; and its final reception into the orthodox system of the church may chiefly be ascribed to Thomas Aquinas, the boast of the Dominican order, and certainly the most distinguished metaphysician of the middle ages. His authority silenced all scruple's as to that of Aristotle, and the two philosophers were treated with equally implicit deference by the later schoolmen.[g]