19. We wish all members of the league, cities, lords, and all others, to arm themselves properly and prepare for war, so that whenever we call upon them we shall find them ready.
20. We decree that the cities between the Moselle and Basel shall prepare 100 war boats, and the cities below the Moselle Military preparations of the league shall prepare 500, well equipped with bowmen, and each city shall prepare herself as well as she can and supply herself with arms for knights and foot-soldiers.
CHAPTER XXI.
UNIVERSITIES AND STUDENT LIFE
The modern university is essentially a product of the Middle Ages. The Greeks and Romans had provisions for higher education, but nothing that can properly be termed universities, with faculties, courses of study, examinations, and degrees. The word "universitas" in the earlier mediæval period was applied indiscriminately to any group or body of people, as a guild of artisans or an organization of the clergy, and only very gradually did it come to be restricted to an association of teachers and students—the so-called universitas societas magistrorum discipulorumque. The origins of mediæval universities are, in most cases, rather obscure. In the earlier Middle Ages the interests of learning were generally in the keeping of the monks and the work of education was carried on chiefly in monastic schools, where the subjects of study were commonly the seven liberal arts inherited from Roman days.[494] By the twelfth century there was a relative decline of these monastic schools, accompanied by a marked development of cathedral schools in which not only the seven liberal arts but also new subjects like law and theology were taught. The twelfth century renaissance brought a notable revival of Roman law, medicine, astronomy, and philosophy; by 1200 the whole of Aristotle's writings had become known; and the general awakening produced immediate results in the larger numbers of students who flocked to places like Paris and Bologna where exceptional teachers were to be found.
Out of these conditions grew the earliest of the universities. No definite dates for the beginnings of Paris, Bologna, Oxford, etc., can be assigned, but the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are to be considered their great formative period. Bologna was specifically the creation of the revived study of the Roman law and of the fame of the great law teacher Irnerius. The university sprang from a series of organizations effected first by the students and later by the masters, or teachers, and modeled after the guilds of workmen. It became the pattern for most of the later Italian and Spanish universities. Paris arose in a different way. It grew directly out of the great cathedral school of Notre Dame and, unlike Bologna, was an organization at the outset of masters rather than of students. It was presided over by the chancellor, who had had charge of education in the cathedral and who retained the exclusive privilege of granting licenses to teach (the licentia docendi), or, in other words, degrees.[495] Rising to prominence in the twelfth century, especially by virtue of the teaching of Abelard (1079-1142), Paris became in time the greatest university of the Middle Ages, exerting profound influence not only on learning, but also on the Church and even at times on political affairs. The universities of the rest of France, as well as the German universities and Oxford and Cambridge in England, were copied pretty closely after Paris.
60. Privileges Granted to Students and Masters
Throughout the Middle Ages numerous special favors were showered upon the universities and their students by the Church. Patronage and protection from the secular authorities were less to be depended on, though the courts of kings were not infrequently the rendezvous of scholars, and the greater seats of learning after the eleventh century generally owed their prosperity, if not their origin, to the liberality of monarchs such as Frederick Barbarossa or Philip Augustus. The recognition of the universities by the temporal powers came as a rule earlier than that by the Church. The edict of the Emperor Frederick I., which comprises selection (a) below, was issued in 1158 and is not to be considered as limited in its application to the students of any particular university, though many writers have associated it solely with the University of Bologna. That the statute was decreed at the solicitation of the Bologna doctors of law admits of little doubt, but, as Rashdall observes, it was "a general privilege conferred on the student class throughout the Lombard kingdom."[496] By some writers it is said to have been the earliest formal grant of privileges for university students, but this cannot be true as Salerno (notable chiefly for medical studies) received such grants from Robert Guiscard and his son Roger before the close of the eleventh century.
Until the year 1200 the students of Paris enjoyed no privileges such as those conferred upon the Italian institutions by Frederick. In that year a tavern brawl occurred between some German students and Parisian townspeople, in which five of the students lost their lives. The provost of the city, instead of attempting to repress the disorder, took sides against the students and encouraged the populace. Such laxity stirred the king, Philip Augustus, to action. Fearing that the students would decamp en masse, he hastened to comply with their appeal for redress. The provost and his lieutenants were arrested and a decree was issued [given, in part, in selection (b)] exempting the scholars from the operation of the municipal law in criminal cases. Pope Innocent III. at once confirmed the privileges and on his part relaxed somewhat the vigilance of the Church. Such liberal measures, however, did not insure permanent peace. In less than three decades another conflict with the provost occurred which was so serious as to result in a total suspension of the university's activities for more than two years.
Sources—(a) Text in Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, Leges (Pertz ed.), Vol. II., p. 114. Adapted from translation by Dana C. Munro in Univ. of Pa. Translations and Reprints, Vol. II., No. 3, pp. 2-4.