Life in the Medieval University

by Robert S. Rait

The Guild or Universitas which grew up in the Studium Generale of Paris was a Society of masters, not of students. The Studium Generale was, in origin, connected with the Cathedral Schools, and recognition as a Master was granted by the Chancellor of the Cathedral, whose duty it was to confer it upon every competent scholar who asked for it. The successful applicant was admitted by the existing masters into their Society, and this admission or inception was the origin of degrees in the University of Paris. The date of the growth of an organised Guild is uncertain; Dr Rashdall, after a survey of the evidence, concludes that "it is a fairly safe inference that the period 1150-1170—probably the latter years of that period—saw the birth of the University of Paris." Such organisation as existed in the twelfth century was slight and customary, depending, as the student-universities of Bologna and in other medieval guilds, upon no external authority. The successors of these early masters, writing in the middle of the thirteenth century, relate how their predecessors, men reverend in character and famous for learning, decided, as the number of their pupils increased, that they could do their work better if they became a united body, and that they therefore formed themselves into a College or University, on which Church and State conferred many privileges. The bond of union they describe as a "jus speciale" ("si quodam essent juris specialis vinculo sociati"), and this conception explains the appearance of their earliest code of statutes in the first decade of the thirteenth century. The Guild of masters, at Paris, like the Guild of students at Bologna, could use with advantage the threat of a migration, and, after a violent quarrel with the town in the year 1200, they received special privileges from Philip Augustus. Some years later, Pope Innocent III. permitted the "scholars of Paris" to elect a procurator or proctor to represent their interests in law-suits at Rome. Litigation at Rome was connected with disputes with the Chancellor of the Cathedral. Already the scholars of Paris had complained to the Pope about the tyranny of the Chancellor, and Innocent had supported their cause, remarking that when he himself studied at Paris he had never heard of scholars being treated in this fashion. It moved and astonished the Pope not a little that the Chancellor should attempt to exact an oath of obedience and payment of money from the masters, and, in the end, that official was compelled to give up his claim to demand fees or oaths of fealty or obedience for a licence to teach, and to relax any oaths that had already been taken. The masters, as Dr Rashdall points out, already possessed the weapon of boycotting, and ordering their students to boycott, a teacher upon whom the Chancellor conferred a licence against the wish of their guild, but they could not at first compel him to grant a licence to anyone whom they desired to admit. After the Papal intervention of 1212, the Chancellor was bound to licence a candidate recommended by the masters.

In the account of their own history, from which we have already quoted, the Parisian masters speak of their venerable "gignasium litterarum" as divided into four faculties, Theology, Law, Medicine, and Philosophy, and they compare the four streams of learning to the four rivers of Paradise. The largest and most important was the Faculty of Arts, and the masters of that Faculty were the protagonists in the struggle with the Chancellor, a struggle which continued long after the intervention of Innocent III. In the course of this long and successful conflict, the Faculty of Arts developed an internal organisation, consisting of four nations, distinguished as the French, the Normans, the Picards, and the English. Each nation elected a proctor, and the four proctors or other representatives of the nations elected a Rector, who was the Head of the Faculty of Arts. The division into nations and the title of Rector may have been copied from Bologna, but the organisation at Paris was essentially different. The Parisian nations were governed by masters, not by students, and whereas, at Bologna, the artists were an insignificant minority, at Paris, the Rector became, by the end of the thirteenth century, the most powerful official of the University, and, by the middle of the fourteenth, was recognised as its Head. The superior Faculties of Theology, Canon Law, and Medicine, though they possessed independent constitutions under their own Deans, consisted largely of men who had taken a Master's or a Bachelor's degree in Arts, and, from the middle of the thirteenth century, they took an oath to the Rector, which was held to be binding even after they became doctors. The non-artist members of these Faculties were not likely to be able to resist an authority whose existence was generally welcomed as the centre of the opposition to the Chancellor. Ultimately, the whole University passed under the sway of the Rector, and the power of the Chancellor was restricted to granting the jus ubique docendi as the representative of the Pope. Even this was little more than a formality, for the Chancellor "ceased," says Dr Rashdall, "to have any real control over the grant or refusal of Licences, except in so far as he retained the nomination of the Examiners in Arts."

At Oxford, the University was also a Guild of masters, but Oxford was not a cathedral city, and there was no conflict with the Bishop or the Chancellor. In the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century, the masters of the Studium probably elected a Rector or Head in imitation of the Parisian Chancellor. After the quarrel with the citizens, which led to the migration to Cambridge, and when King John had submitted to the Pope, the masters were able to obtain an ordinance from the Papal legate determining the punishment of the offenders, and providing against the recurrence of such incidents. The legate ordered that if the citizens should seize the person of a clerk, his surrender might be demanded by "the Bishop of Lincoln, or the Archdeacon of the place or his Official, or the Chancellor, or whomsoever the Bishop of Lincoln shall depute to this office." The clause lays stress upon the authority of the Bishop of Lincoln, which must in no way be diminished by any action of the townsmen. The ecclesiastical authority of the Bishop was welcomed by the University as a protection against the town, and the Chancellor was too far away from Lincoln to press the privileges of the Diocese or the Cathedral against the clerks who were under his special care. The Oxford Chancellor was a master of the Studium, and, though he was the representative of the Bishop, he was also the Head of the masters guild, and from very early times was elected by the masters. Thus he came to identify himself with the University, and his office increased in importance as privileges were conferred upon the University by kings and popes. No Rectorship grew up as a rival to the Chancellorship, though some of the functions of the Parisian Rector were performed at Oxford by the Proctors. There were only two "Nations" at Oxford, for the Oxford masters were, as a rule, Englishmen; men from north of the Trent formed the Northern Nation, and the rest of England the Southern Nation. Scotsmen were classed as Northerners, and Welshmen and Irishmen as Southerners. The division into Nations was short-lived, and the two Rectors or Proctors, though still distinguished as Northern and Southern, soon became representatives elected by the whole Faculty of Arts. As at Paris, the Faculty of Arts was the moving spirit in the University, and Theology, Law, and Medicine never developed at Oxford any independent organisation. The proctors, as Dr Rashdall has shown, thus became the Executive of the University as a whole, and not merely of the Faculty of Arts.

An essential difference between Bologna and its two great northern sisters lies in the fact that, at Paris and at Oxford, masters and scholars alike were all clerks, possessing the tonsure and wearing the clerical garb, though not necessarily even in minor orders. They could thus claim the privileges of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and at Oxford this jurisdiction was exercised by the Chancellor, who also, along with the proctors, was responsible for academic discipline and could settle disputes between members of the University. In this, the University of Oxford had a position of independence which Paris never achieved, for though the Parisian Rector's court dealt with cases of discipline and with internal disputes, criminal jurisdiction remained the prerogative of the Bishop. In the middle of the fourteenth century, royal grants of privileges to the University of Oxford culminated in the subjection of the city, and from the middle of the fifteenth "the burghers lived in their own town almost as the helots or subjects of a conquering people." (Cf. Rashdall, vol. ii. chap. 12, sec. 3). The constitution of Oxford was closely imitated at Cambridge, where the Head of the University was also the Chancellor, and the executive consisted of two rectors or proctors. In the fifteenth century the University freed itself from the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of Ely.

Germany possessed no universities before the fourteenth century. Prague was founded in 1347-8, and was followed before 1400 by Vienna, Erfurt, Heidelberg, and Cologne, and in the first quarter of the next century by Würzburg, Leipsic, Rostock, and in the Low Countries by Louvain. The first Scottish University dates from the early years of the fifteenth century. While the provincial universities of France tended to follow Bologna rather than Paris as their model, the German universities approximated to the Parisian type, and although the founders of the Scottish universities were impressed by some of the conditions of the student-universities, and provided for them a theoretical place in their constitutions, yet the three medieval Scottish universities of Scotland, in their actual working, more nearly resembled the master type.

CHAPTER IV

COLLEGE DISCIPLINE

We are now in a position to approach the main part of our subject—life in a medieval University of masters—and we propose to proceed at once to its most characteristic feature, life in a medieval College. The system originated in Paris. In the early days of the University, students at Paris lived freely in private houses, which a number of "socii" hired for themselves. A record of a dispute which occurred in 1336 shows that it was usual for one member of such a community to be responsible for the rent, "tanquam principalis dictae domus," and the member who was held to be responsible in the particular case is described as a "magister." At first it was not necessary that he should be a master, but this soon became usual, and ultimately (though not till the close of the Middle Ages) it was made compulsory by the University. Dr Rashdall has drawn attention to the democratic character of these Hospicia or Halls, the members of which elected their own principal and made the regulations which he enforced. This democratic constitution is found at Oxford as well as at Paris, and was, indeed, common to all the early universities. When a benevolent donor endowed one of these halls, he invariably gave it not only money, but regulations, and it was the existence of an endowment and of statutes imposed by an external authority that differentiated the College from the Hall. The earliest College founders did not necessarily erect any buildings for the scholars for whose welfare they provided; a College is essentially a society, and not a building. The quadrangular shape which is now associated with the buildings of a College was probably suggested accidentally by the development of Walter de Merton's College at Oxford; but, long after the foundation of Merton College in 1263 or 1264, it was not considered necessary by a founder to build a home for his scholars, who secured a suitable lodging-house (or houses) and were prepared to migrate should such a step become desirable in the interest of the University.

The statutes of Merton provide us with a picture of an endowed Hall at the period when such endowments were beginning to change the character of University life. The conception of a College, as distinguished from the older Halls, developed very rapidly, and the Founder's provisions for the organisation of his society were altered three times within ten years. In 1264, Walter de Merton, sometime Chancellor of England, drew up a code of statutes for the foundation of a house, to be called the House of the Scholars of Merton. His motive was the good of Holy Church and the safety of the souls of his benefactors and relations, and these objects were to be served by providing for the maintenance of twenty poor scholars and two or three priests in the schools of Oxford, or elsewhere, if learning should, in these days of civil war, flourish elsewhere than at Oxford. The endowment which he provided was to consist of his manors of Maldon and Farleigh, in Surrey, to which was added the Merton estate, at the end of what are now the "Backs" in Cambridge. This was purchased in 1269-70. The lands were given to his scholars, to be held under certain conditions, in their own name. His own kindred were to have the first claim upon places in the new Society, and, after them, natives of the diocese of Winchester; they were to have allowances of forty shillings each per annum, to live together in a Hall, and to wear uniform garb in token of unity and mutual love. As vacancies arose, by death, by admission into a religious order, by the acceptance of livings in the Church, or by appointments in other callings, they were to be filled up, and if the funds of the society permitted, the numbers, both of scholars and of priests, were to be increased. Scholars who proved to be incorrigibly idle, or who led evil lives, were to be deprived; but the sick and infirm were to be treated generously, and any of the Founder's kin who suffered from an incurable malady, and were incapable of earning an honest living in the Studium or elsewhere, were to be maintained till their death. It was assumed that the scholars had already received the preliminary training in Latin which was necessary for their studies, but provision was made for the elementary instruction of poor or orphan boys of the Founder's kin, until they were ready to enter the University. Once or twice a year all the members of the foundation were to meet and say mass for their Founder and his benefactors, living and dead. The management of the property was entrusted to a Warden, who was to reside not at Oxford or any other Studium where the Hall might happen to be, but at Maldon or Farleigh. The Warden was a member of the Society, but had no authority over the scholars, except that, in cases of disputed elections, he, or the Chancellor or Rector of the University where the Hall happened to be at the time, was to act on the advice of six or seven of the senior scholars, and the senior scholars, rather than the Warden, were looked upon by the founder as the natural leaders of his Society. Every year, eight or ten of the seniors were to go to Surrey to stay for eight days to inquire into the management of their property, and, if at any other time, evil rumours about the conduct of the Warden reached the Hall, two or three of them were to go to investigate. The scholars could, with the consent of the Patron, the Bishop of Winchester, bring about the deposition of the Warden, and elections to the Wardenship were entrusted to the twelve seniors. They were to consult the "brothers" who assisted the Warden at Merton, and were also to obtain the sanction of the Bishop of Winchester.

These first Merton statutes clearly contemplate an endowed Hall, differing from other Halls only in the existence of the endowment. Some regulations are necessary in order that the tenure of the property of the Society may be secure and that its funds may not be misapplied, and the brief code of statutes is directed to these ends. Walter de Merton's earliest rules make the minimum of change in existing conditions. But the preparation of this code of statutes must have suggested to the Founder that his generosity gave him the power of making more elaborate provisions. The Mendicant Orders had already established at Oxford and at Paris houses for their own members, and the Monastic Orders in France were following the example of the Friars. These houses were, of course, governed by minute and detailed regulations, and it may have seemed desirable to introduce some stricter discipline into the secular halls. At all events, in 1270, Walter de Merton took the opportunity of an increase in his endowments to issue a code of statutes more than twice as long as that of 1264. These new statutes mark a distinct advance in the Founder's ideal of College life. The Warden becomes a much more important factor in the conduct of the Hall as well as in the management of the property; in the election and in the expulsion of scholars he is given a greater place; his allowances are increased, and his presence at Oxford seems to be implied. The scholars are to proceed from Arts to Theology; four or five of them may be permitted to study the Canon Law, and the Warden may allow some of them to devote some time to the Civil Law. Two Sub-Wardens are to be appointed, one at Maldon and one in Oxford; Deans are to watch over the morals of the scholars, and senior students are to preside over the studies of the freshmen. The scholars are to be silent at meals and to listen to a reader; there must be no noise in their chambers, and a senior is to be in authority in each chamber, and to report breaches of regulations. Conversation is to be conducted in Latin.