Life in the Medieval University

by Robert S. Rait

We have here the beginnings of a new system of University life, and we can trace the tendency towards collegiate discipline still more clearly in the Founder's statutes of 1274, which are much longer and more elaborate than in 1270. The scholars or Fellows are now to obey the Warden, as their Superior; the Deans and the seniors in chambers are to bear rule under him and, in the first instance, to report to him; the Sub-Warden is to take his place in his absence and to assist him at other times; three Bursars are to help him in the management, of the property. The Patron or Visitor, may inquire into the conduct of the Warden or into any accusations brought against him, and has the power of depriving him of his office. The Warden is not an absolute sovereign; the thirteen seniors are associated with him in the government of the College, and the Sub-Warden and five seniors are to inspect his accounts once a year. At the periodical scrutinies, when the conduct of all the members of the College is to be examined, accusations can be brought against him and duly investigated. This custom, and others of Walter de Merton's regulations, were clearly borrowed from the rules of monastic houses, and a company of secular clerks seems to have had difficulty in realising that they were bound by them, for as early as 1284 the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had become the Visitor of the College, had to issue a series of orders for the observances of the statutes. The Warden and Fellows of Merton had permitted the study of medicine: they had interpreted too liberally the permission to study law; they had increased their own allowances and the salaries of their brewer and their cook; the Fellows had resisted the authority of the Warden; they had neglected the attendances at divine service enjoined by the Founder, and they had been lax about expulsions. The change which Walter de Merton had made in a scholar's life was so far-reaching that a secular would probably not have shared the astonishment of Archbishop Peckham (himself a friar) at the unwillingness of the Merton scholars to recognise the loss of their traditional freedom.

The system inaugurated by Walter de Merton was destined to have a great development. In the document of 1284, Peckham speaks of Merton as a "College," and its Founder was the founder of the Oxford College system. Although he repeated in his last statutes his permission to move his Society from Oxford, he regarded Oxford as its permanent home. Now that the civil war was over and England at peace, he had, he says, purchased a place of habitation and a house at Oxford, "where a University of students is flourishing." Not only had he provided a dwelling-place, he had also magnificently rebuilt a parish church to serve as a College-Chapel. The example he set was followed both at Oxford and at Cambridge, and the rule of Merton became the model on which College founders based elaborate codes of statutes. English founders generally followed Walter de Merton in making their societies self-governing communities, with an external Visitor as the ultimate court of appeal. There were in many colleges "poor boys" who were taught grammar, performed menial offices, and were not members, nor always eligible for election as members, of the Society; but as a general rule the Fellows or Socii all had a share in the management of the affairs of the House. Routine business was frequently managed by the Head, the officers, and a limited number of the Senior Fellows, but the whole body of Fellows took part in the election of a new Head. A period of probation, varying from one year to three, was generally prescribed before an entrant was admitted a "full and perpetual" Fellow, and during this period of probation he had no right of voting. This restriction was sometimes dispensed with in the case of "Founder's kin," who became full Fellows at once, and the late Sir Edward Wingfield used to boast that in his Freshman term (1850) he had twice voted in opposition to the Warden of New College in a College meeting. As in a monastic house, this freedom was combined with a strict rule of obedience, and though the Head of a medieval College might be irritated by incidents of this kind, he possessed great dignity and high authority within his domain. As founders did more for their students, they expected a larger obedience from them, and attempted to secure it by minute regulations; and the authority of the Head of the College increased with the number of rules which he was to enforce. The foundation of New College at Oxford in 1379 marks the completion of the collegiate ideal which had advanced so rapidly under the successive constitutions of Merton College a hundred years before. William of Wykeham, in providing for the needs of his scholars, availed himself of the experience of the past and created a new model for the future. The Fellows of New College were to be efficiently equipped at Winchester for the studies of the University, and, as we shall see, they were to receive in College special instruction in addition to the teaching of the University. Their magnificent home included, besides their living-rooms, a noble chapel and hall, a library, a garden, and a beautiful cloister for religious processions and for the burial of the dead. King Henry VI. built a still more magnificent house for his Cambridge scholars, and his example was followed by Henry VIII. The later College-founders, as we have said, expected obedience in proportion to their munificence, and the simpler statutes of earlier colleges were frequently revised and assimilated to those of later foundations. We reserve for a later section what we have to say about education, and deal here with habits and customs.

The Merton rule that conversation must be in Latin is generally found in College statutes. At Peterhouse, French might occasionally be spoken, should just and reasonable cause arise, but English very rarely. At New College, Latin was to be spoken even in the garden, though English might be used in addressing a layman. At Queen's College, Oxford, which was founded by a courtier, French was allowed as a regular alternative for Latin, and at Jesus College, Oxford, conversation might be in Greek, Latin, or Hebrew. In spite of the influence of the Renaissance, it seems unlikely that either Greek or Hebrew was much used as an alternative to Latin, but the Latin-speaking rule had become less rigid and in sixteenth-century statutes more generous provision is made for dispensations from it. The Latin rule was not merely an educational method; it was deliberately intended to be a check upon conversation. College founders accepted the apostolic maxim that the tongue worketh great evil, and they were convinced that a golden rule of silence was a protection against both ribaldry and quarrels. In the later statutes of Clare, the legislator recognises that not merely loss of time, but the creation of a disposition to be interested in trifles can be traced to "frequentes collocutiones," and he forbids any meetings in bedrooms (even meetings of Masters of Arts) for the purpose of feasting or of talking. If anyone wishes to receive a friend at dinner or supper, he must apply to the Master for leave, and such leave is to be very rarely given. Conversation in Hall was prohibited by the rule of silence and by the provision of a reader, which we have already found at Merton. The book read was almost invariably the Bible. William of Wykeham, who was followed in this, as in other respects, by later College founders, forbade his scholars to remain in Hall after dinner or supper, on the ground that they were likely to talk scandal and quarrel; but on great Feast days, when a fire was allowed in the Hall, they might sit round and indulge in canticles and in listening to poems and chronicles and "mundi hujus mirabilia." The words, of the statute (which reappear in those of later colleges) seem to imply that even on winter evenings a fire burned in the Hall only on Feast days, and the medieval student must have suffered severely from cold. There were, as a rule, no fireplaces in private rooms until the sixteenth century, when we find references to them, e.g. in the statutes of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; and the wooden shutters which took the place of windows shut out the scanty light of a winter day. When a Disputation (cf. p. 146) was held in Hall at night, a fire was lit, but we are not told how, when there was no Disputation or Colleges meeting, the medieval student spent the time between supper and the "nightcap" which accompanied Compline. Dinner was at ten in the morning and supper at six in the evening. Dr Caius, in the middle of the sixteenth century, ordered his students to be in bed by eight o'clock in the evening, and "early to bed" must have been the custom on winter nights in a medieval College. "Early to rise" was the stern law, even in the dark mornings, for the student's day began at six o'clock, and he must often have listened to lectures which commenced in the dark, although dawn overtook the lecturer before he finished his long exposition. In early times there was no provision for breakfast, and, though the existence of such a meal is distinctly contemplated in the statutes of Queen's College, Oxford, there is no hint of it in those of New College. Probably some informal meal was usual everywhere, and was either paid for privately or winked at by the authorities. The absence of any general provision for breakfast led to its being taken in private rooms and not in Hall, and this is the humble origin of the College breakfast party.

The number of occupants of a single room varied in different colleges. Special provision was made in later College statutes for the Head of the College; at New College he was given (for the first time) a separate establishment and an allowance of plate and kitchen utensils; he was to dine in Hall only on some twenty great Feasts of the Church, and to sit at a separate table on these occasions. Henry VI. followed this precedent at King's, and elsewhere we find that the Head of a College is to have "principalem mansionem" with garden and stabling for the horses, without which it was not becoming that he should travel on College business. It was generally the duty of the Head to apportion the rooms among other members of the College, and to see that the juniors were under proper supervision. At Peterhouse, and in many other colleges, there were to be two in each chamber. When William of Wykeham built on a large scale, he ordered that there should be four occupants in the ground-floor rooms and three in the first-floor rooms. At King's, the numbers were three in ground-floor rooms and two in first-floor rooms. At Magdalen, the numbers were the same as at New College, but two of the beds in the upper rooms and one in the lower were to be "lectuli rotales, Trookyll beddys vulgariter appellati." Separate beds were usually provided, though sometimes boys under fourteen or fifteen years of age were denied this luxury. The bedrooms were also studies; at Oxford there was no general sitting-room, except in monastic colleges, though Cambridge College statutes speak of a "parlura," corresponding to the modern parlour or combination room. Each of the occupants of a room in New College was the proprietor of a small window, at which he worked, probably at some "study" or desk like the old Winchester "toys." The rooms had four windows and four "studiorum loca," and the general type of a College chamber, after the foundation of New College, was a room with one large window, and two, three, or four small windows for "studies."

A large proportion of the care of statute-makers was devoted to the prohibition of amusements. The statutes of Peterhouse forbade dogs or falcons, "for if one can have them in the House, all will want them, and so there will arise a constant howling" to disturb the studious. Dice and chess, being forbidden games to clerks, were also prohibited, and the scholars of Peterhouse were forbidden to frequent taverns, to engage in trade, to mix with actors, or to attend theatrical performances. These enactments are repeated in later College statutes, with such additions as the legislator's knowledge of human nature dictated and with occasional explanations of some interest in themselves. The keeping of dogs is often described as "taking the children's bread and giving it to dogs," and the Founder of Queen's College, Oxford, ordered that no animals were to be kept under the Fellows' rooms, since purity of air is essential for study. William of Wykeham expressly forbade chess, which he classed with games leading to the loss of money or estate, but King Henry VI., who made large use of the statutes of New College, omitted the mention of chess from his King's College statutes, while he added to Wykeham's denunciation of ferrets and hawks, an index expurgatorius of animals which included monkeys, bears, wolves, and stage, and he expressly forbade nets for hunting or fishing. The principle on which modern Deans of colleges have sometimes decided that "gramophones are dogs" and therefore to be excluded from College, can be traced in numerous regulations against musical instruments, which disturb the peace essential to learning. That the medieval student felt the temptations of "ragging" in much the same way as his modern successors, appears from many threats directed against those who throw stones and other missiles to the danger of the buildings. Wykeham thought it necessary to forbid the throwing of stones in Chapel, to the danger of the windows and reredos, and for the safety of the reredos he prohibited dancing or jumping in the Hall, which is contiguous to the Chapel. Games in the Hall were also forbidden for the comfort of the chaplains who lived in the rooms underneath. King Henry VI. forbade dancing or jumping, or other dangerous and improper games in the Chapel, cloister, stalls, and Hall of King's College.

Other disciplinary regulations common to all colleges deal with carrying arms, unpunctuality, talking during the reading in Hall or disturbing the Chapel services, bringing strangers into College, sleeping out of College, absence without leave, negligence and idleness, scurrilous or offensive language, spilling water in upper rooms to the detriment of the inhabitants of the lower rooms, and failure to attend the regular "scrutinies" or the stated general meetings for College business. At these scrutinies, any serious charges against members of the Society were considered, and it is in keeping with some of the judicial ideas of the time that some statutes forbid the accused person to have a copy of the indictment against him. For contumacy, for grave moral offences, for crimes of violence, and for heresy, the penalty was expulsion. Less serious offences were punished by subtraction of "commons," i.e. deprivation of allowances for a day or a week (or longer), or by pecuniary fines. When College founders provided clothes as well as board and lodging for their scholars, the forfeiture of a robe took its place among the penalties with which offenders were threatened. The "poor boys" who sang in Chapel and waited on the Fellows were whipped like boys elsewhere, who were being taught grammar, but the birch was unknown as a punishment for undergraduates till late in the middle ages. The introduction of corporal punishment into college life in England may be traced by a comparison of William of Wykeham's statutes with those of Henry VI. The King's College statute "De correctionibus faciendis circa delicta leviora" is largely a transcript of a New College statute, with the same title, and both contemplate subtraction of commons as the regular penalty. But the King's College statute contains an additional clause, to the effect that scholars and younger Fellows may be punished with stripes. In the statutes of Magdalen, dated some seventeen years later, William of Waynflete returned to the New College form of the statute, but he provided that his demys (i.e. scholars who received half the commons of a Fellow) should be subject to the penalty of whipping in the Grammar School. The statutes of Christ's College prescribe a fine of a farthing for unpunctuality on the part of the scholars, studying in the Faculty of Arts, and heavier fines for absence, and it is added that if the offender be not an adult, a whipping is to be substituted for the pecuniary penalty. At Brasenose, where the Fellows were all of the standing of at least a Bachelor of Arts, the undergraduate scholars were subjected to an unusually strict discipline, and offenders were to be punished either by fines or by the rod, the Principal deciding the appropriate punishment in each case. For unpunctuality, for negligence and idleness, for playing, laughing, talking, making a noise or speaking English in, a lecture-room, for insulting fellow-students, or for disobedience to his pastors and masters, the Brasenose undergraduate was to be promptly flogged. Among the crimes for which the birch is ordered we find "making odious comparisons," a phrase which throws some light on the conversational subjects of sixteenth-century undergraduates. The kind of comparison is indicated in the statute; remarks about the country, the family, the manners, the studies, and the ability, or the person, of a fellow-student must be avoided. Similarly, at Jesus College, Cambridge, it is forbidden to compare country to country, race to race, or science to science, and William of Wykeham and other founders had to make similar injunctions. The medieval student was distinctly quarrelsome, and such records as the famous Merton "scrutiny" of 1339, and investigations by College Visitors, show that the seniors set the undergraduates a bad example. The statutes of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, provide for two new penalties. An offending undergraduate might be sentenced to feed by himself, at a small table in the middle of the Hall, and in aggravated cases to the monastic penalty of bread and water. An alternative penalty was detention in the library at the most inconvenient time ("per horam vel horas cum minime vellet"), and the performance of an imposition to be shown up in due course. The rough and ready penalty of the birch is, however, frequently mentioned in the statutes of Corpus and of other sixteenth-century Colleges. Cardinal Wolsey thought it proper that an undergraduate should be whipped until he had completed his twentieth year. At Trinity, Cambridge (where offenders were sociably flogged before the assembled College on Friday evenings) the age was eighteen. Dr Caius restricted the rod to scholars who were not adult. "We call those adults," he says, "who have completed their eighteenth year. For before that age, both in ancient times and in our own memory, youth was not accustomed to wear brâccas, being content with tibialia reaching to the knees." The stern disciplinarian might find an excuse for prolonging the whipping age in the Founder's wish that, "years alone should not make an adult, but along with years, gravity of deportment and good character." As late as the foundation of Pembroke College at Oxford (1624) whipping is the penalty contemplated for undergraduates under eighteen. But when we come to the statutes which were drawn up in 1698 with a view to the foundation of Worcester College, not only is there no mention of the birch, but even pecuniary penalties are deprecated for minor offences, for which impositions and gating are suggested.

Minor penalties were enforced by the Head of a college, the Vice-Head, the Deans, and, in sixteenth-century colleges, by the tutors. By later college statutes, these officers received for their personal use a portion of the fines they inflicted, and appeals were sometimes permitted from an officer to the Head, and even to the Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor of the University. The oath taken by scholars frequently bound them to reveal to the authorities, any breach of the statutes, and there are indications that members of the College were encouraged to report each other's misdeeds. Thus the Master of Christ's is to fine anyone whom he hears speaking one complete sentence in English, or anyone whom he may know to have been guilty of this offence, except in sleeping-rooms or at times when permission had been given.

Oxford and Cambridge Colleges were, as we have seen, endowed homes for the education of secular clerks. All of them, on entrance, had to have the tonsure, and provision was often made for the cutting of their hair and beard. At Christ's College, there was a regular College barber "qui ... caput et barbam radet ac tondebit hebdomadis singulis." They wore ordinary clerical dress, and undue expenditure on clothes and ornaments was strictly prohibited, e.g. the Fellows of Peterhouse were forbidden to wear rings on their fingers "ad inanem gloriam et jactantiam." The early founders did not insist upon Holy Orders for the Heads or Fellows of their colleges, though many of them would naturally proceed to the priesthood, but in later college statutes all the Fellows were ultimately to proceed, at stated times, to Holy Orders and to the priesthood, though dispensations for delay might be granted, and students of Medicine were sometimes excused from the priesthood. When they became priests they were, like other priests, to celebrate mass regularly in the Chapel, but were not to receive payment for celebrations outside the College. As mere tonsured undergraduates, they were not, at first, subject to regulations for daily attendance at divine service; but later founders were stricter in this, as in other matters. Bishop Bateman, who, in the middle of the fourteenth century, legislated for the infant Gonville College, ordered that every Fellow should hear one mass daily and say certain prayers, and in his own foundation of Trinity Hall, he repeated the injunction. The prescribed prayers included petitions for the Founder, or for the repose of his soul; every Fellow of Trinity Hall was to say, immediately upon rising in the morning and before going to bed at night, the prayer "Rege quaesumus Domine," during the Bishop's lifetime, and after his death, "Deus qui inter Apostolicos Sacerdotes," and to say the psalm "De profundis clamavi" and a "Kurie eleeson" for the repose of the soul of the Founder's father and mother, his predecessors in the see of Norwich, and after his death for his own soul. The ten priests, who served the Chapel at New College, said masses for the Founder and his benefactors, but every Fellow was to attend mass every day and to say prayers in his own room, morning and evening, including "Rege, quaesumus, Domine, Willielmum Pontificem Fundatorem nostrum" or, after his death, "Deus qui inter Apostolicos sacredotes famulum tuum Fundatorem nostrum pontificali dignitate"; and every day, both after High Mass in Chapel, and after dinner and supper in Hall, the psalm "De profundis" was said. Penalties were prescribed for negligence, and as time went on, a whipping was inflicted for absence from Chapel, e.g. at Christ's College, and at Balliol, for which new statutes were drawn up in 1507.

Residence in College was continuous throughout the year, even during the University vacation, which lasted from early in July to the beginning of October. Leave of absence might be granted at any time in the year, on reasonable grounds, but was to be given generally in vacations. General rules were laid down for behaviour in keeping with the clerical profession during absence, and students on leave were forbidden to frequent taverns or otherwise transgress the rules which were binding upon them in the University. Occasionally we find some relaxation in these strict regulations, as when the Founder of Corpus Christi at Oxford allows "moderate hunting or hawking" when one of his scholars is on holiday away from Oxford. The same indulgent Founder, after the usual prohibition of games in College, allows a game of ball in the garden for the sake of healthy exercise. ("Non prohibemus tamen lusum pilae ad murum, tabulata, aut tegulas, in horto, causa solum modo exercendi corporis et sanitatis.") Associations with home life were maintained by vacation visits, but the influx of "people" to the University was, of course, unknown. The ancient statutes of Peterhouse permit a woman (even if she be not a relation) to talk with a Fellow in the Hall, preferably in the presence of another Fellow, or at least, a servant; but the legislator had grave fears of the results of such "confabulationes," and the precedent he set was not followed. A Fellow or scholar is frequently permitted by College statutes to entertain his father, brother, nephew, or a friend, obtaining first the consent of the Head of the College, and paying privately for the entertainment, but no such guest might sleep in College, and the permission is carefully restricted to the male sex. Women were, as a rule, not allowed within a College gate; if it was impossible to find a man to wash clothes, a laundress might be employed, but she must be old and of unprepossessing appearance. A scholar or Fellow of a college had not, however, committed himself irrevocably to a celibate life, for marriage is included among the "causas rationabiles et honestas" which vacated a fellowship. It was possible, though probably infrequent, for a Fellow who had not proceeded to Holy Orders to leave the College "uxore ducta," giving up his emolument, his clerical dress, and the tonsure. Even if a Fellow enjoyed the Founder's provision for the long period of his course in Arts and Theology, and proceeded in due time to Holy Orders, it was not contemplated that he should remain a Fellow till his death.

"... he had geten him yet no benefyce,
Ne was so worldly for to have offyce,"