Life in the Medieval University

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Title: Life in the Medieval University

Author: Robert S. Rait

Release Date: April 2, 2007 [EBook #20958]

Language: English

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The Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature

LIFE IN THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

London: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4

C. F. CLAY,

Manager

New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras: MACMILLAN AND CO.,

Ltd.

Toronto: J. M. DENT & SONS,

Ltd.

Tokyo: THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA

All rights reserved

The Student's Progress

(From Gregor Reisch's Margarita philosophica, Edition of 1504, Strassburg)

First Edition, 1912

Reprinted 1918

With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521

NOTE ON THE FRONTISPIECE

In this picture the schoolboy is seen arriving with his satchel and being presented with a hornbook by Nicostrata, the Latin muse Carmentis, who changed the Greek alphabet into the Latin. She admits him by the key of congruitas to the House of Wisdom (Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars, Proverbs ix. 1). In the lowest story he begins his course in Donatus under a Bachelor of Arts armed with the birch; in the next he is promoted to Priscian. Then follow the other subjects of the Trivium and the Quadrivium each subject being represented by its chief exponent—logic by Aristotle, arithmetic by Boethius, geometry by Euclid, etc. Ptolemy, the philosopher, who represents astronomy, is confused with the kings of the same name. Pliny and Seneca represent the more advanced study of physical and of moral science respectively, and the edifice is crowned by Theology, the long and arduous course for which followed that of the Arts. Its representative in a medieval treatise is naturally Peter Lombard.

NOTE

I wish to express my obligations to many recent writers on University history, and to the editors of University Statutes and other records, from which my illustrations of medieval student life have been derived. I owe special gratitude to Dr Hastings Rashdall, Fellow of New College and Canon of Hereford, my indebtedness to whose great work, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, is apparent throughout the following pages. Dr Rashdall has been good enough to read my proof-sheets, and to make valuable criticisms and suggestions, and the Master of Emmanuel has rendered me a similar service.

R. S. R.

23rd January 1912.

CONTENTS

Chapter I—Introductory

Chaucer and the Medieval Student — The Great Period of University-Founding — The words Universitas, Collegium, Studium Generale — Bologna — Growth of Studia Generalia — Paris, Oxford, Cambridge — Definition of Universitas

Chapter II—Life in the Student-Universities

Student-Guilds at Bologna — Nations — The College of Doctors — Relations with the City — Position of an English Law Student at Bologna, and his relations to his Nation and his Universitas — The Office of Rector — Powers of the University over Citizens — The Degradation of the Bologna Masters — Examinations — The Doctorate — Regulations — Padua — Limitations of the Rector's Powers at Florence — Spanish Universities — Married Dons

Chapter III—The Universities of Masters

Early History of the University of Paris — Faculties — Nations — Struggle with the Chancellor — Position of the Rector — Oxford — Nations — The Proctors — University Jurisdiction — Germany — Scotland

Chapter IV—College Discipline

Origin of the College System — Merton — Imitations of the Merton Rule — New College — Increase in Number of Regulations — Latin-Speaking — Conversation in Hall — Meals — College Rooms — Amusements — Penalties — Introduction of Corporal Punishment — The Tonsure — Attendance at Chapel — Vacations — Hospitality — The Career of an English Student — Meaning of Poor and Indigent Scholars — The College System at Paris — Sconcing — Other French Universities — A Visitation of a Medieval College

Chapter V—University Discipline

Growth of Disciplinary Regulations at Paris and Oxford — Records of the Chancellor's Court — Discipline in Unendowed Halls — Academic Dress restricted to Graduates — Louvain — Leipsic — Leniency of Punishments — The Scottish Universities — Table Manners at Aberdeen — Life at Heidelberg

Chapter VI—The Jocund Advent

Admission of the Bajan at Paris — The Universities of Southern France — The Abbas Bejanorum — The Jocund Advent in Germany — the Depositio — Oxford — Scotland

Chapter VII—Town and Gown

Vienna — St Scholastica's Day at Oxford — Assaults by Members of the University — Records of the Acta Rectorum at Leipsic — Parisian Scholars and the Monks of St Germain

Chapter VIII—Subjects of Study, Lectures, Examinations

Instruction given in Latin — Preparation for the University — Grammar Masters — French taught at Oxford — The Act in Grammar — The Seven Liberal Arts and the Three Philosophies — Text-books — Ordinary and Cursory Lectures — Methods of Lecturing — Repetitions and Disputations — University and College Teaching — Examinations at Paris, Louvain, and Oxford — The Determining Feast — Walter Paston at Oxford

Appendix

Bibliography

Index

LIFE IN THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

"A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also,

That unto logik hadde longe y-go

As lene was his hors as is a rake,

And he was not right fat, I undertake;

But loked holwe, and therto soberly,

Ful thredbar was his overest courtepy,

For he had geten him yet no benefyce,

Ne was so worldly for to have offyce.

For him was lever have at his beddes heed

Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,

Of Aristotle and his philosophye,

Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrye.

But al be that he was a philosophre,

Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;

But al that he might of his freendes hente,

On bokes and on lerninge he it spente,

And bisily gan for the soules preye

Of hem that yaf him wherwith to scoleye,

Of studie took he most cure and most hede,

Noght o word spak he more than was nede,

And that was seyd in forme and reverence

And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.

Souninge in moral vertu was his speche.

And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche."

An account of life in the medieval University might well take the form of a commentary upon the classical description of a medieval English student. His dress, the character of his studies and the nature of his materials, the hardships and the natural ambitions of his scholar's life, his obligations to founders and benefactors, suggest learned expositions which might

in judicious hands

Extend from here to Mesopotamy,

and will serve for a modest attempt to picture the environment of one of the Canterbury pilgrims.

Chaucer's famous lines do more than afford opportunities of explanation and comment; they give us an indication of the place assigned to universities and their students by English public opinion in the later Middle Ages. The monk of the Prologue is simply a country gentleman. No accusation of immorality is brought against him, but he is a jovial huntsman who likes the sound of the bridle jingling in the wind better than the call of the church bells, a lover of dogs and horses, of rich clothes and great feasts. The portrait of the friar is still less sympathetic; he is a frequenter of taverns, a devourer of widows' houses, a man of gross, perhaps of evil, life. The monk abandons his cloister and its rules, the friar despises the poor and the leper. The poet is making no socialistic attack upon the foundations of society, and no heretical onslaught upon the Church; he draws a portrait of two types of the English regular clergy. His description of two types of the English secular clergy forms an illuminating contrast. The noble verses, in which he tells of the virtues of the parish priest, certainly imply that the seculars also had their temptations and that they did not always resist them; but the fact remains that Chaucer chose as the representative of the parochial clergy one who

"wayted after no pompe and reverence,

Ne maked him a spyced conscience,

But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,

He taughte, but first he folwed it himselve."

The history of pious and charitable foundations is a vindication of the truth of the portraiture of the Prologue. The foundation of a new monastery and the endowment of the friars had alike ceased to attract the benevolent donor, who was turning his attention to the universities, where secular clergy were numerous. The clerks of Oxford and Cambridge had succeeded to the place held by the monks, and, after them, by the friars, in the affection and the respect of the nation.

Outside the kingdom of England the fourteenth century was also a great period in the growth of universities and colleges, to which, all over Europe, privileges and endowments were granted by popes, emperors, kings, princes, bishops and municipalities. To attempt to indicate the various causes and conditions which, in different countries, led to the growth, in numbers and in wealth, of institutions for the pursuit of learning would be to wander from our special topic; but we may take the period from the middle of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century as that in which the medieval University made its greatest appeal to the imagination of the peoples of Europe. Its institutional forms had become definite, its terminology fixed, and the materials for a study of the life of the fourteenth century student are abundant. The conditions of student life varied, of course, with country and climate, and with the differences in the constitutions of individual universities and in their relations to Church and State. No single picture of the medieval student can be drawn, but it will be convenient to choose the second half of the fourteenth century, or the first half of the fifteenth, as the central point of our investigation.

We have already used technical terms, University, College, Student, which require elucidation, and others will arise in the course of our inquiry. What is a University? At the present day a University is, in England, a corporation whose power of granting certain degrees is recognised by the State; but nothing of this is implied in the word University. Its literal meaning is simply an association. Recent writers on University history have pointed out that Universitas vestra, in a letter addressed to a body of persons, means merely the whole of you and that the term was by no means restricted to learned bodies. It was frequently applied to municipal corporations; Dr Rashdall, in his learned work, tells us that it is used by medieval writers in addressing all faithful Christian people, and he quotes an instance in which Pisan captives at Genoa in the end of the thirteenth century formed themselves into a Universitas carceratorum. The word College affords us no further enlightenment. It, too, means literally a community or association, and, unlike the sister term University, it has never become restricted to a scholastic association. The Senators of the College of Justice are the judges of the Supreme Court in Scotland.

We must call in a third term to help us. In what we should describe as the early days of European universities, there came into use a phrase sometimes written as Studium Universale or