[489] That is, judges representing any outside authority.
[490] In other words, if the bishop should go from his seat at Hamburg to the colony.
[491] In each parish of the colony, therefore, the priest would be supported by the income of the hide of land set apart for his use and by the tenth of the regular church tithes which the bishop conceded for the purpose.
[492] All that this means is that the members of the Rhine League recognized William of Holland as emperor. Most of the Empire did not so recognize him. He died in 1256, two years after the league was formed.
[493] These "pfahlburgers" were subjects of ecclesiastical or secular princes who, in order to escape the burdens of this relation, contrived to get themselves enrolled as citizens of neighboring cities. While continuing to dwell in regions subject to the jurisdiction of their lords, they claimed to enjoy immunity from that jurisdiction, because of their citizenship in those outside cities. The pfahlburgers were a constant source of friction between the towns and the territorial princes. The Golden Bull of Emperor Charles IV. (1356) decreed that pfahlburgers should not enjoy the rights and privileges of the cities unless they became actual residents of them and discharged their full obligations as citizens.
[494] That is, the trivium (Latin grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music).
[495] The earliest degrees granted at Bologna, Paris, etc., were those of master of arts and doctor of philosophy. "Master" and "Doctor" were practically equivalent terms and both signified simply that the bearer, after suitable examinations, had been recognized as sufficiently proficient to be admitted to the guild of teachers. The bachelor's degree grew up more obscurely. It might be taken somewhere on the road to the master's degree, but was merely an incidental stamp of proficiency up to a certain stage of advancement. Throughout mediæval times the master's, or doctor's, degree, which carried the right to become a teacher, was the normal goal and few stopped short of its attainment.
[496] Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1895), Vol. I., p. 146.
[497] Evidently, from other passages, including students of law as well as teachers.
[498] Greedy creditors sometimes compelled students to pay debts owed by the fellow-countrymen of the latter—a very thinly disguised form of robbery. This abuse was now to be abolished.