Our Legal Heritage : 600-1776 King Aethelbert - King George III

by S. A. Reilly

There were about 1,500 students in Oxford. They drank, played dice, quarreled a lot and begged at street corners. There were mob fights between students from the north and students from the south and between students and townsmen. But when the mayor of Oxford hanged two students accused of being involved in the killing of a townswoman, many masters and students left for Cambridge. In 1214, a charter created the office of Chancellor of the university at Oxford. He was responsible for law and order and, through his court, could fine, imprison, and excommunicate offenders and expel undesirables such as prostitutes from the town. He had authority over all crimes involving scholars, except murder and mayhem. The Chancellor summoned and presided over meetings of the masters and came to be elected by indirect vote by the masters who had schools, usually no more than a room or hall with a central hearth which was hired for lectures. Students paid for meals there. Corners of the room were often partitioned off for private study. At night, some students slept on the straw on the floor. Six hours of sleep were considered sufficient. In 1231, the king ordered that every student must have his name on the roll of a master and the masters had to keep a list of those attending his lectures.

In 1221 the friars established their chief school at Oxford. They were bound by oaths of poverty, obedience, and chastity, but were not confined within the walls of a monastery. They walked barefoot from place to lace preaching. They begged for their food and lodgings. They replaced monks, who had become self-indulgent, as the most vital spiritual force among the people.

The first college was founded in 1264 by Walter de Merton, former Chancellor to the King, at Oxford. A college had the living arrangements of a Hall, with the addition of monastic-type rules. A warden and about 30 scholars lived and ate meals together in the college buildings. Merton College's founding documents provided that: "The house shall be called the House of the Scholars of Merton, and it shall be the residence of the Scholars forever. . . There shall be a constant succession of scholars devoted to the study of letters, who shall be bound to employ themselves in the study of Arts or Philosophy, the Canons or Theology. Let there also be one member of the collegiate body, who shall be a grammarian, and must entirely devote himself to the study of grammar; let him have the care of the students in grammar, and to him also let the more advanced have recourse without a blush, when doubts arise in their faculty. . . There is to be one person in every chamber, where Scholars are resident, of more mature age than the others, who is to make his report of their morals and advancement in learning to the Warden. . . The Scholars who are appointed to the duty of studying in the House are to have a common table, and a dress as nearly alike as possible. . . The members of the College must all be present together, as far as their leisure serves, at the canonical hours and celebration of masses on holy and other days. . . The Scholars are to have a reader at meals, and in eating together they are to observe silence, and to listen to what is read. In their chambers, they must abstain from noise and interruption of their fellows; and when they speak they must use the Latin language. . . A Scrutiny shall be held in the House by the Warden and the Seniors, and all the Scholars there present, three times a year; a diligent enquiry is to be instituted into the life, conduct, morals, and progress in learning, of each and all; and what requires correction then is to be corrected, and excesses are to be visited with condign punishment. . ."

Educated men (and those of the 1200s through the 1500s), believed that the earth was the center of the universe and that it was surrounded by a giant spherical dome on which the stars were placed. The sun and moon and planets were each on a sphere around the earth that was responsible for their movements. The origin of the word "planet" meant "wanderer" because the motion of the planets were variable in direction and speed. Astrology explained how the position of the stars and planets influenced man and other earthly things. For instance, the position of the stars at a person's birth determined his character. The angle and therefore potency of the sun's rays influenced climate, temperament, and changes of mortal life such as disease and revolutions. Unusual events such as the proximity of two planets, a comet, an eclipse, a meteor, or a nova were of great significance. A star often was thought to presage the birth of a great man or a hero. There was a propitious time to have a marriage, go on a journey, make war, and take herbal medicine or be bled by leeches, the latter of which was accompanied by religious ceremony. Cure was by God, with medical practitioners only relieving suffering. But there were medical interventions such as pressure and binding were applied to bleeding. Arrow and sword wounds to the skin or to any protruding intestine were washed with warm water and sewn up with needle and silk thread. Ribs were spread apart by a wedge to remove arrow heads. Fractured bones were splinted or encased in plaster. Dislocations were remedied. Hernias were trussed. Bladder stones blocking urination were pushed back into the bladder or removed through an artificial opening in the bladder. Surgery was performed by butchers, blacksmiths, and barbers.

Roger Bacon, an Oxford master, began the science of physics. He read Arab writers and studied the radiation of light and heat. He studied angles of reflection in plane, spherical, cylindrical, and conical mirrors, in both their concave and convex aspects. He did experiments in refraction in different media, e.g. air, water, and glass, and knew that the human cornea refracted light and that the human eye lens was doubly convex. He comprehended the magnifying power of convex lenses and conceptualized the combination of lenses which would increase the power of vision by magnification. He realized that rays of light pass so much faster than those of sound or smell that the time is imperceptible to humans. He knew that rays of heat and sound penetrate all matter without our awareness and that opaque bodies offered resistance to passage of light rays. He knew the power of parabolic concave mirrors to cause parallel rays to converge after reflection to a focus and knew that a mirror could be produced that would induce combustion at a fixed distance. These insights made it possible for jewellers and weavers to use lenses to view their work instead of glass globes full of water, which distorted all but the center of the image: "spherical aberration". The lens, whose opposite surfaces were sections of spheres, took the place of the the central parts of the globe over the image.

He knew about magnetic poles attracting if different and repelling if the same and the relation of magnets' poles to those of the heavens and earth. He calculated the circumference of the world and the latitude and longitude of terrestrial positions. He foresaw sailing around the world.

Bacon began the science of chemistry when he took the empirical knowledge as to a few metals and their oxides and some of the principal alkalis, acids, and salts to the abstract level of metals as compound bodies the elements of which might be separated and recomposed and changed among the states of solid, liquid, and gas. When he studied man's physical nature, health, and disease, he opined that the usefulness of a talisman was not to bring about a physical change, but to bring the patient into a frame of mind more conducive to physical healing. He urged that there be experiments in chemistry to develop medicinal drugs.

He studied different kinds of plants and the differences between arable land, forest land, pasture land, and garden land.

He studied the planetary motions and astronomical tables to forecast future events. He did calculations on days in a month and days in a year which later contributed to the legal definition of a leap year.

Bacon was an extreme proponent of the inductive method of finding truths, e.g. by categorizing all available facts on a certain subject to ascertain the natural laws governing it. His contribution to the development of science was abstracting the method of experiment from the concrete problem to see its bearing and importance as a universal method of research. He advocated changing education to include studies of the natural world using observation, exact measurement, and experiments.