Part 2 — Chapter III. (These four articles abrogated by the four articles following them, 118-122.) Article 118. The Federal Constitution may at any time be amended. (continued 7)

J. H. Newman, Historical Sketches: Rise and Progress of Universities, chapter 8.

"In the three centuries which intervened between Alexander and Augustus, Athens was preëminently the training school for philosophy, Rhodes, on the other hand, as the only Greek state of political importance in which a career of grand and dignified activity was open for the orator, distinguished itself in the study of eloquence, while Alexandria rested its fame chiefly on the excellence of its instruction in Philology and Medicine. At a subsequent period the last mentioned University obtained even greater celebrity as having given birth to a school of philosophers who endeavored to combine into a species of theosophic doctrine the mental science of Europe with the more spiritual minded and profoundly human religions of the East. In the third century Alexandria became conspicuous as the headquarters of the Eclectics and Neo·Platonists."

E. Kirkpatrick, Historical Development of Superior Instruction (Barnard's American Journal of Education, volume 24, pages 466-467).

EDUCATION: Rome.

"If we cast a final glance at the question of education, we shall find but little to say of it, as far as regards the period before Cicero. In the republican times the state did not trouble itself about the training of youth: a few prohibitory regulations were laid down, and the rest left to private individuals. Thus no public instruction was given; public schools there were, but only as private undertakings for the sake of the children of the rich. All depended on the father; his personal character and the care taken by the mother in education decided the development of the child's disposition. Books there were none; and therefore they could not be put into the hands of children. A few rugged hymns, such as those of the Salii and Arval brothers, with the songs in Fescennine verse, sung on festivals and at banquets, formed the poetical literature. A child would hear, besides, the dirges, or memorial verses, composed by women in honour of the dead, and sometimes, too, the public panegyrics pronounced on their departed relatives, a distinction accorded to women also from the time of Camillus. {686} Whatever was taught a boy by father or mother, or acquired externally to the house, was calculated to make the Roman 'virtus' appear in his eyes the highest aim of his ambition; the term including self-mastery, an unbending firmness of will, with patience, and an iron tenacity of purpose in carrying through whatever was once acknowledged to be right. The Greek palestra and its naked combatants always seemed strange and offensive to Roman eyes. In the republican times the exercises of the gymnasium were but little in fashion; though riding, swimming, and other warlike exercises were industriously practised, as preparations for the campaign. The slave pædagogus, assigned to young people to take charge of them, had a higher position with the Romans than the Greeks; and was not allowed to let his pupils out of his sight till their twentieth year. The Latin Odyssey of Livius Andronicus was the school-book first in use; and this and Ennius were the only two works to create and foster a literary taste before the destruction of Carthage. The freedman Sp. Carvilius was the first to open a school for higher education. After this the Greek language and literature came into the circle of studies, and in consequence of the wars in Sicily, Macedon, and Asia, families of distinction kept slaves who knew Greek. Teachers quickly multiplied, and were either liberti, or their descendants. No free-born Roman would consent to be a paid teacher, for that was held to be a degradation. The Greek language remained throughout the classical [age] one for Romans: they even made their children begin with Homer. As, by the seventh century of the republic, Ennius, Plautus, Pacuvius, and Terence, had already become old poets, dictations were given to scholars from their writings. The interpretation of Virgil began under Augustus, and by this time the younger Romans were resorting to Athens, Rhodes, Apollonia, and Mitylene, in order to make progress in Greek rhetoric and philosophy. As Roman notions were based entirely on the practical and the useful, music was neglected as a part of education; while, as a contrast, boys were compelled to learn the laws of the twelve tables by heart. Cicero, who had gone through this discipline with other boys of his time, complains of the practice having begun to be set aside; and Scipio Æmilianus deplored, as an evil omen of degeneracy, the sending of boys and girls to the academies of actors, where they learnt dancing and singing, in company with young women of pleasure. In one of these schools were to be found as many as five hundred young persons, all being instructed in postures and motions of the most abandoned kind. … On the other hand, the gymnastic exercises, which had once served the young men as a training for war, fell into disuse, having naturally become objectless and burdensome, now that, under Augustus, no more Roman citizens chose to enlist in the legions. Still slavery was, and continued to be, the foremost cause of the depravation of youth, and of an evil education. … It was no longer the mothers who educated their own children: they had neither inclination nor capacity for such duty, for mothers of the stamp of Cornelia had disappeared. Immediately on its birth, the child was intrusted to a Greek female slave, with some male slave, often of the worst description, to help her. … The young Roman was not educated in the constant companionship of youths of his own age, under equal discipline: surrounded by his father's slaves and parasites, and always accompanied by a slave when he went out, he hardly received any other impressions than such as were calculated to foster conceit, indolence, and pride in him."

J. J. I. Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew, volume 2, pages 279-281.

EDUCATION: Higher Education under the Empire.

"Besides schools of high eminence in Mytilene, Ephesus, Smyrna, Sidon, etc., we read that Apollonia enjoyed so high a reputation for eloquence and political science as to be entrusted with the education of the heir-apparent of the Roman Empire. Antioch was noted for a Museum modelled after that of the Egyptian metropolis, and Tarsus boasted of Gymnasia and a University which Strabo does not hesitate to describe as more than rivaling those of Athens and Alexandria. There can be little doubt that the philosophers, rhetoricians, and grammarians who swarmed in the princely retinues of the great Roman aristocracy, and whose schools abounded in all the most wealthy and populous cities of the empire east and west, were prepared for their several callings in some one or other of these institutions. Strabo tells us … that Rome was overrun with Alexandrian and Syrian grammarians, and Juvenal describes one of the Quirites of the ancient stamp as emigrating in sheer disgust from a city which from these causes had become thoroughly and utterly Greek. … That external inducements were held out amply sufficient to prevail upon poor and ambitious men to qualify themselves at some cost for vocations of this description is evident from the wealth to which, as we are told, many of them rose from extreme indigence and obscurity. Suetonius, in the still extant fragment of his essay 'de claris rhetoribus,' after alluding to the immense number of professors and doctors met with in Rome, draws attention to the frequency with which individuals who had distinguished themselves as teachers of rhetoric had been elevated into the senate, and advanced to the highest dignities of the state. That the profession of a philologist was occasionally at least well remunerated is evident from the facts recorded by the same author in his work 'de claris grammaticis,' section 3. He there mentions that there were at one time upwards of twenty well attended schools devoted to this subject at Rome, and that one fortunate individual, Q. Remmius Palaemon, derived four hundred thousand sesterces, or considerably above three thousand a year, from instruction in philology alone. Julius Caesar conferred the citizenship, together with large bounties in money, and immunity from public burthens, on distinguished rhetoricians and philologists, in order to encourage their presence at Rome. … That individuals who thus enjoyed an income not greatly below the revenues of an English Bishopric were not, as the name might lead us to imagine, employed in teaching the accidents of grammar, but possessed considerable pretensions to that higher and more thoughtful character of the scholar which it has been reserved for modern Europe to exhibit in perfection, is not only in itself highly probable, but supported by the distinctest and most unimpeachable evidence. Seneca tells us that history was amongst the subjects professed by grammarians, and Cicero regards the most thorough and refined perception of all that pertains to the spirit and individuality of the author as an indispensable requisite in those who undertake to give instruction in this subject. … The grammatici appear to have occupied a position very closely analogous to that of the teachers of collegiate schools in England, and the gymnasial professors in Germany."

E. Kirkpatrick, Historical Development of Superior Instruction (Barnard's American Journal of Education, volume 24, pages 468-470.)

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EDUCATION: Mediæval. The Chaos of Barbaric Conquest.

"The utter confusion subsequent upon the downfall of the Roman Empire and the irruption of the Germanic races was causing, by the mere brute force of circumstance, a gradual extinction of scholarship too powerful to be arrested. The teaching of grammar for ecclesiastical purposes was insufficient to check the influence of many causes leading to this overthrow of learning. It was impossible to communicate more than a mere tincture of knowledge to students separated from the classical tradition, for whom the antecedent history of Rome was a dead letter. The meaning of Latin words derived from the Greek was lost. … Theological notions, grotesque and childish beyond description, found their way into etymology and grammar. The three persons of the Trinity were discovered in the verb, and mystic numbers in the parts of speech. Thus analytical studies like that of language came to be regarded as an open field for the exercise of the mythologising fancy; and etymology was reduced to a system of ingenious punning. … Virgil, the only classic who retained distinct and living personality, passed from poet to philosopher, from philosopher to Sibyl, from Sibyl to magician, by successive stages of transmutation, as the truth about him grew more dim and the faculty to apprehend him weakened. Forming the staple of education in the schools of the grammarians, and metamorphosed by the vulgar consciousness into a wizard, he waited on the extreme verge of the dark ages to take Dante by the hand, and lead him, as the type of human reason, through the realms of Hell and Purgatory."

J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: the Revival of Learning; chapter 2.

EDUCATION: Mediæval. Gaul: 4th-5th Centuries.

"If institutions could do all, if laws supplied and the means furnished to society could do everything, the intellectual state of Gaulish civil society at this epoch [4th-5th centuries] would have been far superior to that of the religious society. The first, in fact, alone possessed all the institutions proper to second the development of mind, the progress and empire of ideas. Roman Gaul was covered with large schools. The principal were those of Trèves, Bordeaux, Autun, Toulouse, Poitiers, Lyons, Narbonne, Aries, Marseilles, Vienne, Besançon, &c. Some were very ancient; those of Marseilles and of Autun, for example, dated from the first century. They were taught philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence, literature, grammar, astrology, all the sciences of the age. In the greater part of these schools, indeed, they at first taught only rhetoric and grammar; but towards the fourth century, professors of philosophy and law were everywhere introduced. Not only were these schools numerous, and provided with many chairs, but the emperors continually took the professors of new measures into favor. Their interests are, from Constantine to Theodosius the younger, the subject of frequent imperial constitutions, which sometimes extended, sometimes confirmed their privileges. … After the Empire was divided among many masters, each of them concerned himself rather more about the prosperity of his states and the public establishments which were in them. Thence arose a momentary amelioration, of which the schools felt the effects, particularly those of Gaul, under the administration of Constantius Clorus, of Julian, and of Gratian. By the side of the schools were, in general, placed other analogous establishments. Thus, at Trèves there was a grand library of the imperial palace, concerning which no special information has reached us, but of which we may judge by the details· which have reached us concerning that of Constantinople. This last had a librarian and seven scribes constantly occupied—four for Greek, and three for Latin. They copied both ancient and new works. It is probable that the same institution existed at Trèves, and in the great towns of Gaul. Civil society, then, was provided with means of instruction and intellectual development. It was not the same with religious society. It had at this epoch no institution especially devoted to teaching; it did not receive from the state any aid to this particular aim. Christians, as well as others, could frequent the public schools; but most of the professors were still pagans. … It was for a long time in the inferior classes, among the people, that Christianity was propagated, especially in the Gauls, and it was the superior classes which followed the great schools. Moreover, it was hardly until the commencement of the fourth century that the Christians appeared there, and then but few in number. No other source of study was open to them. The establishments which, a little afterwards, became, in the Christian church, the refuge and sanctuary of instruction, the monasteries, were hardly commenced in the Gauls. It was only after the year 360 that the two first were founded by St. Martin—one at Ligugé, near Poitiers, the other at Marmoutiers, near Tours; and they were devoted rather to religious contemplation than to teaching. Any great school, any special institution devoted to the service and to the progress of intellect, was at that time, therefore, wanting to the Christians. … All things in the fifth century, attest the decay of the civil schools. The contemporaneous writers, Sidonius Apollinaris and Mamertius Claudianus, for example, deplore it in every page, saying that the young men no longer studied, that professors were without pupils, that science languished and was being lost. … It was especially the young men of the superior classes who frequented the schools; but these classes … were in rapid dissolution. The schools fell with them; the institutions still existed, but they were void—the soul had quitted the body. The intellectual aspect of Christian society was very different. … Institutions began to rise, and to be regulated among the Christians of Gaul. The foundation of the greater portion of the large monasteries of the southern provinces belongs to the first half of the fifth century. … The monasteries of the south of Gaul were philosophical schools of Christianity; it was there that intellectual men meditated, discussed, taught; it was from thence that new ideas, daring thoughts, heresies, were sent forth. … {688} Towards the end of the sixth century, everything is changed: there are no longer civil schools; ecclesiastical schools alone subsist. Those great municipal schools of Treves, of Poitiers, of Vienne, of Bordeaux, &c., have disappeared; in their place have arisen schools called cathedral or episcopal schools, because each episcopal see had its own. The cathedral school was not always alone; we find in certain dioceses other schools, of an uncertain nature and origin, wrecks, perhaps, of some ancient civil school, which, in becoming metamorphosed, had perpetuated itself. … The most flourishing of the episcopal schools from the sixth to the middle of the eighth century were those of: 1. Poitiers. There were many schools in the monasteries of the diocese at Poitiers itself, at Ligugé, at Ansion, &c. 2. Paris. 3. LeMans. 4. Bourges. 5. Clermont. There was another school in the town where they taught the Theodosian code; a remarkable circumstance, which I do not find elsewhere. 6. Vienne. 7. Châlons-sur-Saone. 8. ArIes. 9. Gap.

The most flourishing of the monastic schools of the same epoch were those of: 1. Luxeuil, in Franche-Comté. 2. Fontenelle, or Saint Vandrille, in Normandy; in which were about 300 students. 3. Sithiu, in Normandy. 4. Saint Médard, at Soissons. 5. Lerens.

It were easy to extend this list; but the prosperity of monastic schools was subject to great vicissitudes; they flourished under a distinguished abbot, and declined under his successor. Even in nunneries, study was not neglected; that which Saint Cesaire founded at Aries contained, at the commencement of the sixth century, two hundred nuns, for the most part occupied in copying books, sometimes religious books, sometimes, probably, even the works of the ancients. The metamorphosis of civil schools into ecclesiastical schools was complete. Let us see what was taught in them. We shall often find in them the names of sciences formerly professed in the civil schools, rhetoric, logic, grammar, geometry, astrology, &c.; but these were evidently no longer taught except in their relations to theology. This is the foundation of the instruction: all was turned into commentary of the Scriptures, historical, philosophical, allegorical, moral, commentary. They desired only to form priests; all studies, whatsoever their nature, were directed towards this result. Sometimes they went even further: they rejected the profane sciences themselves, whatever might be the use made of them."

F. Guizot, History of Civilization to the French Revolution, volume 2, lecture 4 and 16.

EDUCATION: Ireland. Scotland. Schools of Iona.

Popular accounts represent St. Patrick as "founding at least a hundred monasteries, and even those who consider that the greater number of the Irish colleges were raised by his followers after his death, admit the fact of his having established an episcopal monastery and school at Armagh, where he and his clergy carried out the same rule of life that he had seen followed in the churches of Gaul. … The school, which formed a portion of the Cathedral establishment, soon rose in importance. Gildas taught here for some years before joining St. Cadoc at Llancarvan; and in process of time the number of students, both native and foreign, so increased that the university, as we may justly call it, was divided into three parts, one of which was devoted entirely to students of the Anglo-Saxon race. Grants for the support of the schools were made by the Irish kings in the eighth century; and all through the troublous times of the ninth and tenth centuries, when Ireland was overrun by the Danes, and so many of her sanctuaries were given to the flames, the succession of divinity professors at Armagh remained unbroken, and has been carefully traced by Usher. We need not stop to determine how many other establishments similar to those of Armagh were really founded in the lifetime of St. Patrick. In any case the rapid extension of the monastic institute in Ireland, and the extraordinary ardour with which the Irish cœnobites applied themselves to the cultivation of letters remain undisputed facts. 'Within a century after the death of St. Patrick,' says Bishop Nicholson, 'the Irish seminaries had so increased that most parts of Europe sent their children to be educated here, and drew thence their bishops and teachers.' The whole country for miles round Leighlin was denominated the 'land of saints and scholars.' By the ninth century Armagh could boast of 7,000 students, and the schools of Cashel, Dindaleathglass, and Lismore vied with it in renown. This extraordinary multiplication of monastic seminaries and scholars may be explained partly by the constant immigration of British refugees who brought with them the learning and religious observances of their native cloisters, and partly by that sacred and irresistible impulse which animates a newly converted people to heroic acts of sacrifice. In Ireland the infant church was not, as elsewhere, watered with the blood of martyrs. … The bards, who were to be found in great numbers among the early converts of St. Patrick, had also a considerable share in directing the energies of their countrymen to intellectual labour. They formed the learned class, and on their conversion to Christianity were readily disposed to devote themselves to the culture of sacred letters. … It would be impossible, within the limits of a single chapter, to notice even the names of all the Irish seats of learning, or of their most celebrated teachers, everyone of whom has his own legend in which sacred and poetic beauties are to be found blended together. One of the earliest monastic schools was that erected by Enda, prince of Orgiel, in that western island called from the wild flowers which even still cover its rocky soil, Aran-of-the-Flowers, a name it afterwards exchanged for that of Ara-na-naomh, or Aran-of-the-Saints. … A little later St. Finian founded his great school of Clonard, whence, says Usher, issued forth a stream of saints and doctors, like the Greek warriors from the wooden horse. …. This desolate wilderness was soon peopled by his disciples, who are said to have numbered 3,000, of whom the twelve most eminent are often termed the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. … Among them none were more famous than St. Columba, St. Kieran, and St. Brendan. The first of these is known to every English reader as the founder of Iona; and Kieran, the carpenter's son, as he is called, is scarcely less renowned among his own countrymen. … It was in the year 563 that St. Columba, after founding the monasteries of Doire-Calgaich and Dair-magh in his native land, and incurring the enmity of one of the Irish kings, determined on crossing over into Scotland in order to preach the faith to the Northern Picts. Accompanied by twelve companions, he passed the Channel in a rude wicker boat covered with skins, and landed at Port-na Currachan, on a spot now marked by a heap of huge conical stones. {689} Conall, king of the Albanian Scots, granted him the island of I, Hi, or Ai, hitherto occupied by the Druids, and there he erected the monastery which, in time, became the mother of three hundred religious houses. … Iona, or I-Colum-kil, as it was called by the Irish, came to be looked on as the chief seat of learning, not only in Britain, but in the whole Western world. 'Thither, as from a nest,' says Odonellus, playing on the Latin name of the founder, 'these sacred doves took their flight to every quarter.' They studied the classics, the mechanical arts, law, history, and physic. They improved the arts of husbandry and horticulture, supplied the rude people whom they had undertaken to civilise with ploughshares and other utensils of labour, and taught them the use of the forge, in the mysteries of which every Irish monk was instructed from his boyhood. They transferred to their new homes all the learning of Armagh or Clonard. … In every college of Irish origin, by whomsoever they were founded or on whatever soil they flourished, we thus see study blended with the duties of the missionary and the cœnobite. They were religious houses, no doubt, in which the celebration of the Church office was often kept up without intermission by day and night; but they were also seminaries of learning, wherein sacred and profane studies were cultivated with equal success. Not only their own monasteries but those of every European country were enriched with their manuscripts, and the researches of modern bibliopolists are continually disinterring from German or Italian libraries a Horace, or an Ovid, or a Sacred Codex whose Irish gloss betrays the hand which traced its delicate letters."

A. T. Drane, Christian Schools and Scholars, chapter 2.

EDUCATION: Charlemagne.

"If there ever was a man who by his mere natural endowments soared above other men, it was Charlemagne. His life, like his stature, was colossal. Time never seemed wanting to him for anything that he willed to accomplish, and during his ten years campaign against the Saxons and Lombards, he contrived to get leisure enough to study grammar, and render himself tolerably proficient as a Latin writer in prose and verse. He found his tutors in the cities that he conquered. When he became master of Pisa, he gained the services of Peter of Pisa, whom he set over the Palatine school, which had existed even under the Merovingian kings, though as yet it was far from enjoying the fame to which it was afterwards raised by the teaching of Alcuin. He possessed the art of turning enemies into friends, and thus drew to his court the famous historian, Paul Warnefrid, deacon of the Church of Rome, who had previously acted as secretary to Didier, king of the Lombards. … Another Italian scholar, St. Paulinus, of Aquileja, was coaxed into the service of the Frankish sovereign after his conquest of Friuli; I will not say that he was bought, but he was certainly paid for by a large grant of confiscated territory made over by diploma to 'the Venerable Paulinus, master of the art of grammar.' But none of these learned personages were destined to take so large a part in that revival of learning which made the glory of Charlemagne's reign, as our own countryman Alcuin. It was in 781, on occasion of the king's second visit to Italy, that the meeting took place at Parma, the result of which was to fix the English scholar at the Frankish court. Having obtained the consent of his own bishop and sovereign to this arrangement, Alcuin came over to France in 782, bringing with him several of the best scholars of York, among whom were Wizo, Fredegis, and Sigulf. Charlemagne received him with joy, and assigned him three abbeys for the maintenance of himself and his disciples, those namely, of Ferrières, St. Lupus of Troyes, and St. Josse in Ponthieu. From this time Alcuin held the first place in the literary society that surrounded the Frankish sovereign, and filled an office the duties of which were as vast as they were various. Three great works at once claimed his attention, the correction of the liturgical books, the direction of the court academy, and the establishment of other public schools throughout the empire. … But it was as head of the Palatine school that Alcuin's influence was chiefly to be felt in the restoration of letters. Charlemagne presented himself as his first pupil, together with the three princes, Pepin, Charles, and Louis, his sister Gisla and his daughter Richtrude, his councillors Adalard and Angilbert, and Eginhard his secretary. Such illustrious scholars soon found plenty to imitate their example, and Alcuin saw himself called on to lecture daily to a goodly crowd of bishops, nobles, and courtiers. The king wished to transform his court into a new Athens preferable to that of ancient Greece, in so far as the doctrine of Christ is to be preferred to that of Plato. All the liberal arts were to be taught there, but in such a way as that each should bear reference to religion, for this was regarded as the final end of of all learning. Grammar was studied in order better to understand the Holy Scriptures and to transcribe them more correctly; music, to which much attention was given, was chiefly confined to the ecclesiastical chant; and it was principally to explain the Fathers and refute errors contrary to the faith that rhetoric and dialectics were studied. 'In short,' says Crevier, 'the thought both of the king and of the scholar who laboured with him was to refer all things to religion, nothing being considered as truly useful which did not bear some relation to that end.' At first Alcuin allowed the study of the classic poets, and in his boyhood, as we know, he had been a greater reader of Virgil than of the Scriptures. … The authors whose study Charlemagne and Alcuin desired to promote, were not so much Virgil and Cicero, as St. Jerome and St. Augustine; and Charlemagne, in his excessive admiration of those Fathers, gave utterance to the wish that he had a dozen such men at his court. The 'City of God' was read at the royal table, and the questions addressed by the court students to their master turned rather on the obscurities of Holy Writ than the difficulties of prosody. In one thing, however, they betrayed a classic taste, and that was in their selection of names. The Royal Academicians all rejoiced in some literary soubriquet; Alcuin was Flaccus; Angilbert, Homer; but Charlemagne himself adopted the more scriptural appellation of David. The eagerness with which this extraordinary man applied himself to acquire learning for himself, and to extend it throughout his dominions, is truly admirable, when we remember the enormous labours in which he was constantly engaged."

A. T. Drane, Christian Schools and Scholars, chapter 5.

See, also, SCHOOL OF THE PALACE, CHARLEMAGNE'S.

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EDUCATION: England King Alfred.

King Alfred "gathered round him at his own court the sons of his nobility to receive, in conjunction with his own children, a better education than their parents would be able or willing to give them in their own households. To this assemblage of pupils Asser has attached the name of school, and a violent controversy once distracted the literary world concerning the sense in which the word was to be understood, and whether it was not the beginning or origin of a learned institution still existing. In speaking of this subject, Asser has taken occasion to enumerate and describe the children who were born to Alfred from his wife Elswitha, daughter of Ethelred the 'Big,' alderman of the Gaini, and a noble of great wealth and influence in Mercia. 'The sons and daughters,' says Asser, 'which he had by his wife above mentioned, were Ethelfled the eldest, after whom came Edward, then Ethelgiva, then Ethelswitha, and Ethelwerd, besides those who died in their infancy, one of whom was Edmund. Ethelfled, when she arrived at a marriageable age, was united to Ethelred, earl of Mercia; Ethelgiva was dedicated to God, and submitted to the rules of a monastic life; Ethelwerd, the youngest, by the Divine counsels and admirable prudence of the king, was consigned to the schools of learning, where, with the children of almost all the nobility of the country, and many also who were not noble, he prospered under the diligent care of his teachers. Books in both languages, namely, in Latin and Saxon, were read in the school. They also learned to write; so that, before they were of an age to practise manly arts, namely hunting and such other pursuits as befit noblemen, they became studious and clever in the liberal arts. Edward and Ethelswitha were bred up in the king's court, and received great attention from their servants and nurses; nay, they continue to this day, with the love of all about them, and shew affability, and even gentleness, towards all, both foreigners and natives, and are in complete subjection to their father; nor, among their other studies which appertain to this life and are fit for noble youths, are they suffered to pass their time idly and unprofitably, without learning the liberal arts; for they have carefully learned the Psalms and Saxon books, especially the Saxon Poems, and are continually in the habit of making use of books.' The schools of learning, to which Asser alludes in this passage, as formed for the use of the king's children and the sons of his nobles, are again mentioned elsewhere by the same author, as 'the school which he had studiously collected together, consisting of many of the nobility of his own nation:' and in a third passage, Asser speaks of the 'sons of the nobility who were bred up in the royal household.' It is clear, then, from these expressions, that the king's exertions to spread learning among his nobles and to educate his own children, were of a most active and personal nature, unconnected with any institutions of a more public character: the school was kept in his own household, and not in a public seat of learning. We may perhaps adduce these expressions of Asser as militating against the notion, that an University or Public Seminary of Learning existed in the days of Alfred. Though it is most probable that the several monasteries, and other societies of monks and churchmen, would employ a portion of their idle time in teaching youth, and prosecuting their own studies; yet there is no proof that an authorized seat of learning, such as the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, existed in England, until many hundred years after the time of Alfred."

J. A. Giles, Life and Times of Alfred the Great, chapter 21.

EDUCATION: Saracenic and Moorish learning.

"Even as early as the tenth century, persons having a taste for learning and for elegant amenities found their way into Spain from all adjoining countries; a practice in subsequent years still more indulged in, when it became illustrated by the brilliant success of Gilbert, who … passed from the Infidel University of Cordova to the papacy of Rome. The khalifs of the West carried out the precepts of Ali, the fourth successor of Mohammed, in the patronage of literature. They established libraries in all their chief towns; it is said that not fewer than seventy were in existence. To every mosque was attached a public school, in which the children of the poor were taught to read and write, and instructed in the precepts of the Koran. For those in easier circumstances there were academies, usually arranged in twenty-five or thirty apartments, each calculated for accommodating four students; the academy being presided over by a rector. In Cordova, Granada, and other great cities, there were universities frequently under the superintendence of Jews; the Mohammedan maxim being that the real learning of a man is of more public importance than any particular religious opinions he may entertain. In this they followed the example of the Asiatic khalif, Haroun Alraschid, who actually conferred the superintendence of his schools on John Masué, a Nestorian Christian. The Mohammedan liberality was in striking contrast with the intolerance of Europe. … In the universities some of the professors of polite literature gave lectures on Arabic classical works; others taught rhetoric or composition, or mathematics, or astronomy. From these institutions many of the practices observed in our colleges were derived. They held Commencements, at which poems were read and orations delivered in presence of the public. They had also, in addition to these schools of general learning, professional ones, particularly for medicine. With a pride perhaps not altogether inexcusable, the Arabians boasted of their language as being the most perfect spoken by man. … It is not then surprising that, in the Arabian schools, great attention was paid to the study of language, and that so many celebrated grammarians were produced. By these scholars, dictionaries, similar to those now in use, were composed; their copiousness is indicated by the circumstance that one of them consisted of sixty volumes, the definition of each word being illustrated or sustained by quotations from Arab authors of acknowledged repute. They had also lexicons of Greek, Latin, Hebrew; and cyclopedias such as the Historical Dictionary of Sciences of Mohammed Ibn Abdallah, of Granada."

J. W. Draper, History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, volume 2, chapter 2.

"The Saracenic kings formed libraries of unparalleled size and number. That of Hakem amounted to 600,000 volumes, of which 44 were employed in the mere catalogue. Upwards of 70 public libraries were established in his dominions. 100,000 volumes were numbered in the library of Cairo, and were freely lent to the studious citizen. The taste of the sovereign communicated itself to the subject, and a private doctor declared that his books were sufficient to load 400 camels. {691} Nor were the Saracens less attentive to the foundation of schools and colleges. Eighty of the latter institutions adorned Cordova in the reign of Hakem; in the fifteenth century fifty were scattered over the city and plain of Granada. 200,000 dinars (about £100,000 sterling) were expended on the foundation of a single college at Baghdad. It was endowed with an annual revenue of 15,000 dinars, and was attended by 6,000 students. The princes of the house of Omeya honoured the Spanish academies by their presence and studies, and competed, not without success, for the prizes of learning. Numerous schools for the purpose of elementary instruction were founded by a long series of monarchs. … In this manner the Arabians, within two centuries, constructed an apparatus for mental improvement which hitherto had not been equalled save in Alexandria, and to which the Church, after ruling the intellect of Europe for more than five hundred years, could offer no parallel."

The Intellectual Revival of the Middle Ages (Westminster Review, January, 1876).

EDUCATION: Scholasticism. Schoolmen.

In the later times of the Roman empire, "the loss of the dignity of political freedom, the want of the cheerfulness of advancing prosperity, and the substitution of the less philosophical structure of the Latin language for the delicate intellectual mechanism of the Greek, fixed and augmented the prevalent feebleness and barrenness of intellect. Men forgot, or feared, to consult nature, to seek for new truths, to do what the great discoverers of other times had done; they were content to consult libraries, to study and defend old opinions, to talk of what great geniuses had said. They sought their philosophy in accredited treatises, and dared not question such doctrines as they there found. … In the mean time the Christian religion had become the leading subject of men's thoughts; and divines had put forward its claims to be, not merely the guide of men's lives, and the means of reconciling them to their heavenly Master, but also to be a Philosophy in the widest sense in which the term had been used;—a consistent speculative view of man's condition and nature, and of the world in which he is placed. … It was held, without any regulating principle, that the philosophy which had been bequeathed to the world by the great geniuses of heathen antiquity, and the philosophy which was deduced from, and implied by, the Revelations made by God to man, must be identical; and, therefore, that Theology is the only true philosophy. … This view was confirmed by the opinion which prevailed, concerning the nature of philosophical truth; a view supported by the theory of Plato, the practice of Aristotle, and the general propensities of the human mind: I mean the opinion that all science may be obtained by the use of reasoning alone;—that by analyzing and combining the notions which common language brings before us, we may learn all that we can know. Thus Logic came to include the whole of Science; and accordingly this Abelard expressly maintained. … Thus a Universal Science was established, with the authority of a Religious Creed. Its universality rested on erroneous views of the relation of words and truth; its pretensions as a science were admitted by the servile temper of men's intellects; and its religious authority was assigned it, by making all truth part of religion. And as Religion claimed assent within her own jurisdiction under the most solemn and imperative sanctions, Philosophy shared in her imperial power, and dissent from their doctrines was no longer blameless or allowable. Error became wicked, dissent became heresy; to reject the received human doctrines, was nearly the same as to doubt the Divine declarations. The Scholastic Philosophy claimed the assent of all believers. The external form, the details, and the text of this Philosophy, were taken, in a great measure, from Aristotle; though, in the spirit, the general notions, and the style of interpretation, Plato and the Platonists had no inconsiderable share. … It does not belong to our purpose to consider either the theological or the metaphysical doctrines which form so large a portion of the treatises of the schoolmen. Perhaps it may hereafter appear, that some light is thrown on some of the questions which have occupied metaphysicians in all ages, by that examination of the history of the Progressive Sciences in which we are now engaged; but till we are able to analyze the leading controversies of this kind, it would be of little service to speak of them in detail. It may be noticed, however, that many of the most prominent of them refer to the great question, 'What is the relation between actual things and general terms?' Perhaps in modern times, the actual things would be more commonly taken as the point to start from; and men would begin by considering how classes and universals are obtained from individuals. But the schoolmen, founding their speculations on the received modes of considering such subjects, to which both Aristotle and Plato had contributed, travelled in the opposite direction, and endeavored to discover how individuals were deduced from genera and species;—what was 'the Principle of Individuation.' This was variously stated by different reasoners. Thus Bonaventura solves the difficulty by the aid of the Aristotelian distinction of Matter and Form. The individual derives from the Form the property of being something, and from the Matter the property of being that particular thing. Duns Scotus, the great adversary of Thomas Aquinas in theology, placed the principle of Individuation in 'a certain determining positive entity,' which his school called Hæcceity or 'thisness.' 'Thus an individual man is Peter, because his humanity is combined with Petreity.' The force of abstract terms is a curious question, and some remarkable experiments in their use had been made by the Latin Aristotelians before this time. In the same way in which we talk of the quantity and quality of a thing, they spoke of its 'quiddity.' We may consider the reign of mere disputation as fully established at the time of which we are now speaking [the Middle Ages]; and the only kind of philosophy henceforth studied was one in which no sound physical science had or could have a place."

W. Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, book 4, chapter 4 (volume 1).

"Scholasticism was philosophy in the service of established and accepted theological doctrines. … More particularly, Scholasticism was the reproduction of ancient philosophy under the control of ecclesiastical doctrine. … The name of Scholastics (doctores scholastici) which was given to the teachers of the septem liberales artes [seven liberal arts] (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, in the Trivium; arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, in the Quadrivium), or at least some of them, in the Cloister-Schools founded by Charlemagne, as also to teachers of theology, was afterwards given to all who occupied themselves with the sciences, and especially with philosophy. … Johannes Scotus, or Erigena [ninth century] is the earliest noteworthy philosopher of the Scholastic period. He was of Scottish nationality, but was probably born and brought up in Ireland. At the call of Charles the Bald he emigrated to France."

F. Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, volume 1, pages 355-484.

{692}

"Scholasticism, at the last, from the prodigious mental activity which it kept up, became a tacit universal insurrection against authority: it was the swelling of the ocean before the storm. … It was a sign of a great awakening of the human mind when theologians thought it both their duty and their privilege to philosophize. There was a vast waste of intellectual labor, but still it was intellectual labor, and, as we shall see, it was not in the end unfruitful."

C. J. Stillé, Studies in Mediæval History, chapter 13.

"Scholasticism had its hour of glory, its erudite doctors, its eloquent professors, chief among whom was Abelard (1070-1142). … At a time when printing did not exist, when manuscript copies were rare, a teacher who combined knowledge with the gift of speech was a phenomenon of incomparable interest, and students flocked from all parts of Europe to take advantage of his lectures. Abelard is the most brilliant representative of the scholastic pedagogy, with an original and personal tendency towards the emancipation of the mind. 'It is ridiculous,' he said, 'to preach to others what we can neither make them understand nor understand ourselves.' With more boldness than Saint Anselm, he applied dialectics to theology, and attempted to reason out the grounds of his faith. The seven liberal arts constituted what may be called the secondary instruction of the Middle Age, such as was given in the claustral or conventual schools, and later, in the universities. The liberal arts were distributed into two courses of study, known as the 'trivium' and the 'quadrivium.' The 'trivium' comprised grammar (Latin grammar, of course), dialectics, or logic, and rhetoric; and the 'quadrivium,' music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. It is important to note the fact that this programme contains only abstract and formal studies,—no real and concrete studies. The sciences which teach us to know man and the world, such as history, ethics, the physical and natural sciences, were omitted and unknown, save perhaps in a few convents of the Benedictines. Nothing which can truly educate man, and develop his faculties as a whole, enlists the attention of the Middle Age. From a course of study thus limited there might come skillful reasoners and men formidable in argument, but never fully developed men. The methods employed in the ecclesiastical schools of the Middle Age were in accord with the spirit of the times, when men were not concerned about liberty and intellectual freedom; and when they thought more about the teaching of dogmas than about the training of the intelligence. The teachers recited or read their lectures, and the pupils learned by heart. The discipline was harsh. Corrupt human nature was distrusted. In 1363, pupils were forbidden the use of benches and chairs, on the pretext that such high seats were an encouragement to pride. For securing obedience, corporal chastisements were used and abused. The rod is in fashion in the fifteenth as it was in the fourteenth century. 'There is no other difference,' says an historian, 'except that the rods in the fifteenth century are twice as long as those in the fourteenth.'"

G. Compayré, The History of Pedagogy, translated by W. H. Payne, chapter 4.

EDUCATION: Universities, Their Rise. Abelard.

"Up to the end of the eleventh century the instruction was, speaking generally, and allowing for transitory periods of revival, and for a few exceptional schools, a shrunken survival of the old 'trivium et quadrivium.' The lessons, when not dictated and learnt by heart from notes, were got up from bald epitomes. All that was taught, moreover, was taught solely with a view to 'pious uses.' Criticism did not exist; the free spirit of speculation could not, of course, exist. … As we approach the period which saw the birth of those institutions known as Studia Publica or Generalia, and ere long to be known as 'universities,' we have to extend our vision and recognize the circumstances of the time, and those changes in the social condition of Europe which made great central schools possible—schools to be frequented not merely by the young ecclesiastic, but by laymen. Among other causes which led to the diffusion of a demand for education among the laity, was, I think, the institution or reorganization of municipalities. It was about the end of the eleventh century that the civic Communes (Communia) began to seek and obtain, from royal and other authorities, charters of incorporation constituting their internal government and conferring certain freedoms and privileges as against the encroachment of lay and ecclesiastical feudal barons. … About the same time, and somewhat prior to this, trade guilds had been formed in many cities for mutual protection, the advancement of commerce, and the internal regulation of the various crafts. There immediately followed a desire for schools in the more important commercial towns. In Italy such schools arose in Bologna, Milan, Brescia, and Florence; and in Germany they arose in Lübeck, Hamburg, Breslau, Nordhausen, Stettin, Leipsic, and Nürnberg. The distinctive characteristic of these city schools was, that they do not seem to have been under the direct control of the Church, or to have been always taught by priests; further, that the native tongue (German or Italian, as the case might be) was taught. Reading, writing, and a little arithmetic seem to have formed the staple of the instruction. The custom of dictating, writing down, and then learning by heart what was written—universal in the schools of the preceding centuries—was, of course, still followed in these burgh schools. This custom was almost inevitable. … The increased communication with Africa and the East through the Crusades had introduced men to a standard of learning among the Arabs, unknown in Europe. Outside the school, the order of chivalry had introduced a new and higher ethical spirit than had been known in the previous centuries. Civic communities and trade guilds were forming themselves and seeking charters of incorporation. Above all; the Crusades, by stimulating the ardour and exciting the intellects of men, had unsettled old convention by bringing men of all ranks within the sacred circle of a common enthusiasm, and into contact with foreign civilizations. {693} The desire for a higher education, and the impulse to more profound investigation, that characterized the beginning and course of the twelfth century, was thus only a part of a widespread movement, political and moral. … While the Romano-Hellenic schools had long disappeared, there still existed, in many towns, episcopal schools of a high class, many of which might be regarded as continuations of the old imperial provincial institutions. … In Bologna and Paris, Rheims and Naples, it was so. The arts curriculum professed in these centres was, for the time and state of knowledge, good. These schools, indeed, had never quite lost the fresh impulse given by Charlemagne and his successors. … According to my view of educational history, the great 'studia publica' or 'generalia' arose out of them. They were themselves, in a narrow sense, already 'studia publica.' … Looking, first, to the germ out of which the universities grew, I think we must say that the universities may be regarded as a natural development of the cathedral and monastery schools; but if we seek for an external motive force urging men to undertake the more profound and independent study of the liberal arts, we can find it only in the Saracenic schools of Bagdad, Babylon, Alexandria, and Cordova. … To fix precisely the date of the rise of the first specialized schools or universities is impossible, for the simple reason that they were not founded. … The simplest account of the new university origins is the most correct. It would appear that certain active-minded men of marked eminence began to give instruction in medical subjects at Salerno, and in law at Bologna, in a spirit and manner not previously attempted, to youths who had left the monastery and cathedral schools, and who desired to equip themselves for professional life. Pupils flocked to them; and the more able of these students, finding that there was a public demand for this higher specialized instruction, remained at headquarters, and themselves became teachers or doctors. The Church did not found universities any more than it founded the order of chivalry. They were founded by a concurrence (not wholly fortuitous) of able men who had something they wished to teach, and of youths who desired to learn. None the less were the acquiescence and protection of Church and State necessary in those days for the fostering of these infant seminaries. … Of the three great schools which we have named, there is sufficient ground for believing that the first to reach such a development as to entitle it to the name of a studium generale or university was the 'Schola Salernitana,' although it never was a university, technically speaking."

S. S. Laurie, Rise and Early Constitution of Universities, lectures 6-7.

"Ideas, till this time scattered, or watched over in the various ecclesiastical schools, began to converge to a common centre. The great name of University was recognised in the capital of France, at the moment that the French tongue had become almost universal. The conquests of the Normans, and the first crusade, had spread its powerfully philosophic idiom in every direction, to England, to Sicily, and to Jerusalem. This circumstance alone invested France, central France, Paris, with an immense attractive power. By degrees, Parisian French became a proverb. Feudalism had found its political centre in the royal city; and this city was about to become the capital of human thought. The beginner of this revolution was not a priest, but a handsome young man of brilliant talents, amiable and of noble family. None wrote love verses, like his, in the vulgar tongue; he sang them, too. Besides, his erudition was extraordinary for that day. He alone, of his time, knew both Greek and Hebrew. May be, he had studied at the Jewish schools (there were many in the South), or under the rabbins of Troyes, Vitry, or of Orleans. There were then in Paris two leading schools: the old Episcopal school of the parvis Notre Dame, and that of St. Geneviève, on the hill, where shone William of Champeaux. Abelard joined his pupils, submitted to him his doubts, puzzled him, laughed at him, and closed his mouth. He would have served Anselm of Laon the same, had not the professor, being a bishop, expelled him from his diocese. In this fashion this knight-errant of logic went on, unhorsing the most celebrated champions. He himself declared that he had only renounced tilt and tourney through his passion for intellectual combats. Henceforward, victorious and without a rival, he taught at Paris and Melun, the residence of Louis-le-Gros, and the lords flocked to hear him; anxious to encourage one of themselves, who had discomfited the priests on their own ground, and had silenced the ablest clerks. Abelard's wonderful success is easily explained. All the lore and learning which had been smothered under the heavy, dogmatical forms of clerical instruction, and hidden in the rude Latin of the middle age, suddenly appeared arrayed in the simple elegance of antiquity, so that men seemed for the first time to hear and recognise a human voice. The daring youth simplified and explained everything; presenting philosophy in a familiar form, and bringing it home to men's bosoms. He hardly suffered the obscure or supernatural to rest on the hardest mysteries of faith. It seemed as if till then the Church had lisped and stammered; while Abelard spoke. All was made smooth and easy. He treated religion courteously and handled her gently, but she melted away in his hands. Nothing embarrassed the fluent speaker: he reduced religion to philosophy, and morality to humanity. 'Crime,' he said, 'consists not in the act, but in the intention.' It followed, that there was no such thing as sins of habit or of ignorance—'They who crucified Jesus, not knowing him to have been the Saviour, were guilty of no sin.' What is original sin?—'Less a sin, than a punishment.' But then, wherefore the redemption and the passion, if there was no sin?—'It was an act of pure love. God desired to substitute the law of love for that of fear.'"

J. Michelet, History of France, volume 1, book 4, chapter 4.

"It is difficult, by a mere perusal of Abelard's works, to understand the effect he produced upon his hearers by the force of his argumentation, whether studied or improvised, and by the ardor and animation of his eloquence, and the grace and attractiveness of his person. But the testimony of his contemporaries is unanimous; even his adversaries themselves render justice to his high oratorical qualities. No one ever reasoned with more subtlety, or handled the dialectic tool with more address; and assuredly, something of these qualities is to be found in the writings he has left us. But the intense life, the enthusiastic ardor which enlivened his discourses, the beauty of his face, and the charm of his voice cannot be imparted by cold manuscripts. {694} Héloise, whose name is inseparably linked with that of her unfortunate husband, and whom Charles de Rémusat does not hesitate to call 'the first of women'; who, in any case, was a superior person of her time; Héloise, who loved Abelard with 'an immoderate love,' and who, under the veil of a 'religieuse' and throughout the practice of devotional duties, remained faithful to him until death; Héloise said to him in her famous letter of 1136: 'Thou hast two things especially which could instantly win thee the hearts of all women: the charm thou knowest how to impart to thy voice in speaking and singing.' External gifts combined with intellectual qualities to make of Abelard an incomparable seducer of minds and hearts. Add to this an astonishing memory, a knowledge as profound as was compatible with the resources of his time, and a vast erudition which caused his contemporaries to consider him a master of universal knowledge. … How can one be astonished that with such qualities Abelard gained an extraordinary ascendency over his age; that, having become the intellectual ruler and, as it were, the dictator of the thought of the twelfth century, he should have succeeded in attracting to his chair and in retaining around it thousands of young men; the first germ of those assemblages of students who were to constitute the universities several years later? … It is not alone by the outward success of his scholastic apostolate that Abelard merits consideration as the precursor of the modern spirit and the promoter of the foundation of the universities; it is also by his doctrine, or at least by his method. … No one claims that Abelard was the first who, in the Middle Ages, had introduced dialectics into theology, reason into authority. In the ninth century, Scotus Erigena had already said: 'Authority is derived from reason.' Scholasticism, which is nothing but logic enlightening theology, an effort of reason to demonstrate dogma, had begun before Abelard; but it was he who gave movement and life to the method by lending it his power and his renown."

G. Compayré, Abelard, part 1, chapters 2-3.

EDUCATION: Latin Language.

"Greek was an unknown tongue: only a very few of the Latin classics received a perfunctory attention: Boethius was preferred to Cicero, and the Moral Sentences ascribed to Cato to either. Rules couched in barbarous Latin verse were committed to memory. Aristotle was known only in incorrect Latin translations, which many of the taught, and some of the teachers probably, supposed to be the originals. Matters were not mended when the student, having passed through the preliminary course of arts, advanced to the study of the sciences. Theology meant an acquaintance with the 'Sentences' of Peter Lombard, or, in other cases, with the 'Summa' of Thomas Aquinas; in medicine, Galen was an authority from which there was no appeal. On every side the student was fenced round by traditions and prejudices, through which it was impossible to break. In truth, he had no means of knowing that there was a wider and fairer world beyond. Till the classical revival came, every decade made the yoke of prescription heavier, and each generation of students, therefore, a feebler copy of the last."

C. Beard, Martin Luther and the Reformation, chapter 3.

"What at first had been everywhere a Greek became in Western Europe a Latin religion. The discipline of Rome maintained the body of doctrine which the thought of Greece had defined. A new Latin version, superseding alike the venerable Greek translation of the Old Testament and the original words of Evangelists and Apostles, became the received text of Holy Scripture. The Latin Fathers acquired an authority scarcely less binding. The ritual, lessons, and hymns of the Church were Latin. Ecclesiastics transacted the business of civil departments requiring education. Libraries were armories of the Church: grammar was part of her drill. The humblest scholar was enlisted, in her service: she recruited her ranks by founding Latin schools. 'Education in the rudiments of Latin,' says Hallam, 'was imparted to a greater number of individuals than at present;' and, as they had more use for it than at present, it was longer retained. If a boy of humble birth had a taste for letters, or if a boy of high birth had a distaste for arms, the first step was to learn Latin. His foot was then on the ladder. He might rise by the good offices of his family to a bishopric, or to the papacy itself by merit and the grace of God. Latin enabled a Greek from Tarsus (Theodore) to become the founder of learning in the English church; and a Yorkshireman (Alcuin) to organize the schools of Charlemagne. Without Latin, our English Winfrid (St. Boniface) could not have been apostle of Germany and reformer of the Frankish Church; or the German Albert, master at Paris of Thomas Aquinas; or Nicholas Breakspeare, Pope of Rome. With it, Western Christendom was one vast field of labor: calls for self-sacrifice, or offers of promotion, might come from north or south, from east or west. Thus in the Middle Ages Latin was made the groundwork of education; not for the beauty of its classical literature, nor because the study of a dead language was the best mental gymnastic, or the only means of acquiring a masterly freedom in the use of living tongues, but because it was the language of educated men throughout Western Europe, employed for public business, literature, philosophy, and science; above all, in God's providence, essential to the unity, and therefore enforced by the authority of, the Western Church."

C. S. Parker, Essay on the History of Classical Education (quoted in Dr. Henry Barnard's "Letters, Essays and Thoughts on Studies and Conduct," page 467).

EDUCATION: France.

"The countries of western Europe, leavened, all of them, by the one spirit of the feudal and catholic Middle Age, formed in some sense one community, and were more associated than they have been since the feudal and catholic unity of the Middle Age has disappeared and given place to the divided and various life of modern Europe. In the mediæval community France held the first place. It is now well known that to place in the 15th century the revival of intellectual life and the re-establishment of civilisation, and to treat the period between the 5th century, when ancient civilisation was ruined by the barbarians, and the 15th, when the life and intellect of this civilisation reappeared and transformed the world, as one chaos, is a mistake. The chaos ends about the 10th century; in the 11th there truly comes the first re-establishment of civilisation, the first revival of intellectual life; the principal centre of this revival is France, its chief monuments of literature are in the French language, its chief monuments of art are the French cathedrals. {695} This revival fills the 12th and 13th centuries with its activity and with its works; all this time France has the lead; in the 14th century the lead passes to Italy; but now comes the commencement of a wholly new period, the period of the Renaissance properly so called, the beginning of modern European life, the ceasing of the life of the feudal and catholic Middle Age. The anterior and less glorious Renaissance, the Renaissance within the limits of the Middle Age itself, a revival which came to a stop and could not successfully develop itself, but which has yet left profound traces in our spirit and our literature,—this revival belongs chiefly to France. France, then, may well serve as a typical country wherein to trace the mediæval growth of intellect and learning; above all she may so stand for us, whose connection with her in the Middle Age, owing to our Norman kings and the currency of her language among our cultivated class, was so peculiarly close; so close that the literary and intellectual development of the two countries at that time intermingles, and no important event can happen in that of the one without straightway affecting and interesting that of the other. … With the hostility of the long French Wars of Edward the Third comes the estrangement, never afterwards diminishing but always increasing."

M. Arnold, Schools and Universities on the Continent, chapter 1.

EDUCATION: University of Paris.

"The name of Abelard recalls the European celebrity and immense intellectual ferment of this school [of Paris] in the 12th century. But it was in the first year of the following century, the 13th, that it received a charter from Philip Augustus, and thenceforth the name of University of Paris takes the place of that of School of Paris. Forty-nine years later was founded University College, Oxford, the oldest college of the oldest English University. Four nations composed the University of Paris,—the nation of France, the nation of Picardy, the nation of Normandy, and (signal mark of the close intercourse which then existed between France and us!) the nation of England. The four nations united formed the faculty of arts. The faculty of theology was created in 1257, that of law in 1271, that of medicine in 1274. Theology, law, and medicine had each their Dean; arts had four Procurators, one for each of the four nations composing this faculty. Arts elected the rector of the University, and had possession of the University chest and archives. The preeminence of the Faculty of Arts indicates, as indeed does the very development of the University, an idea, gradually strengthening itself, of a lay instruction to be no longer absorbed in theology, but separable from it. The growth of a lay and modern spirit in society, the preponderance of the crown over the papacy, of the civil over the ecclesiastical power, is the great feature of French history in the 14th century, and to this century belongs the highest development of the University. … The importance of the University in the 13th and 14th centuries was extraordinary. Men's minds were possessed with a wonderful zeal for knowledge, or what was then thought knowledge, and the University of Paris was the great fount from which this knowledge issued. The University and those depending on it made at this time, it is said, actually a third of the population of Paris; when the University went on a solemn occasion in procession to Saint Denis, the head of the procession, it is said, had reached St. Denis before the end of it had left its starting place in Paris. It had immunities from taxation, it had jurisdiction of its own, and its members claimed to be exempt from that of the provost of Paris; the kings of France strongly favoured the University, and leaned to its side when the municipal and academical authorities were in conflict; if at any time the University thought itself seriously aggrieved, it had recourse to a measure which threw Paris into dismay,—it shut up its schools and suspended its lectures. In a body of this kind the discipline could not be strict, and the colleges were created to supply centres of discipline which the University in itself,—an apparatus merely of teachers and lecture-rooms,—did not provide. The 14th century is the time when, one after another, with wonderful rapidity, the French colleges appeared. Navarre, Montaigu, Harcourt, names so familiar in the school annals of France, date from the first quarter of the 14th century. The College of Navarre was founded by the queen of Philip the Fair, in 1304; the College of Montaigu, where Erasmus, Rabelais, and Ignatius Loyola were in their time students, was founded in 1314 by two members of the family of Montaigu, one of them Archbishop of Rouen. The majority of these colleges were founded by magnates of the church, and designed to maintain a certain number of bursars, or scholars, during their university course. … Along with the University of Paris there existed in France, in the 14th century, the Universities of Orleans, Angers, Toulouse, and Montpellier. Orleans was the great French school for the study of the civil law. … The civil law was studiously kept away from the University of Paris, for fear it should drive out other studies, and especially the study of theology; so late as the year 1679 there was no chair of Roman or even of French law in the University of Paris. The strength of this University was concentrated on theology and arts, and its celebrity arose from the multitude of students which in these branches of instruction it attracted."

M. Arnold, Schools and Universities on the Continent, chapter 1.

EDUCATION: The Sorbonne.

The University of Paris acquired the name of "the Sorbonne" "from Robert of Sorbon, aulic chaplain of St. Louis, who established one of the 63 colleges of the University. … The name of Sorbonne was first applied to the theological faculty only; but at length the whole University received this designation."

J. Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History, volume 3, page 24, foot-note.

EDUCATION: The Nations.

"The precise date of the organization at Paris of the four Nations which maintained themselves there until the latest days of the university escapes the most minute research. Neither for the Nations nor for the Faculties was there any sudden blossoming, but rather a slow evolution, an insensible preparation for a definite condition. Already at the close of the twelfth century there is mention in contemporary documents of the various provinces of the school of Paris. The Nations are mentioned in the bulls of Gregory IX. (1231) and of Innocent IV. (1245). In 1245, they already elect their attendants, the beadles. In 1249, the existence of the four Nations—France, Picardy, Normandy, and England—is proved by their quarrels over the election of a rector. … Until the definitive constitution of the Faculties, that is, until 1270 or 1280, the four Nations included the totality of students and masters. {696} After the formation of the Faculties, the four Nations comprised only the members of the Faculty of Arts and those students of other Faculties who had not yet obtained the grade of Bachelor of Arts. The three superior Faculties, Theology, Medicine, and Law, had nothing in common thenceforward with the Nations. … At Bologna, as at Paris, the Nations were constituted in the early years of the thirteenth century, but under a slightly different form. There the students were grouped in two distinct associations, the Ultramontanes and the Citramontanes, the foreigners and the Italians, who formed two universities, the Transalpine and the Cisalpine, each with its chiefs, who were not styled procurators but counsellors; the first was composed of eighteen Nations and the second of seventeen. At Padua twenty-two Nations were enumerated. Montpellier had only three in 1339,—the Catalans, the Burgundians, the Provençals; each sub-divided, however, into numerous groups. Orleans had ten: France, Germany, Lorraine, Burgundy, Champagne, Picardy, Normandy, Touraine, Guyanne, and Scotland; Poitiers had four: France, Aquitaine, Touraine, and Berry; Prague had four also, in imitation of Paris; Lerida had twelve, in imitation of Bologna, etc. But whether more or less numerous, and whatever their special organization, the Nations in all the universities bore witness to that need of association which is one of the characteristics of the Middle Ages. … One of the consequences of their organization was to prevent the blending and fusion of races, and to maintain the distinction of provinces and nationalities among the pupils of the same university."

G. Compayré, Abelard, part 2, chapter 2.

EDUCATION: Italy Revived Study of Roman Law.

"It is known that Justinian established in Rome a school of law, similar to those of Constantinople and Berytus. When Rome ceased to be subject to Byzantine rule, this law-school seems to have been transferred to Ravenna, where it continued to keep alive the knowledge of the Justinian system. That system continued to be known and used, from century to century, in a tradition never wholly interrupted, especially in the free cities of Northern Italy. It seems even to have penetrated beyond Italy into Southern France. But it was destined to have, at the beginning of the twelfth century, a very extraordinary revival. This revival was part of a general movement of the European mind which makes its appearance at that epoch. The darkness which settled down on the world, at the time of the barbarian invasions, had its midnight in the ninth and tenth centuries. In the eleventh, signs of progress and improvement begin to show themselves, becoming more distinct towards its close, when the period of the Crusades was opening upon Europe. Just at this time we find a famous school of law established in Bologna, and frequented by multitudes of pupils, not only from all parts of Italy, but from Germany, France, and other countries. The basis of all its instruction was the Corpus Juris Civilis [see CORPUS JURIS CIVILIS]. Its teachers, who constitute a series of distinguished jurists extending over a century and a half, devoted themselves to the work of expounding the text and elucidating the principles of the Corpus Juris, and especially the Digest. From the form in which they recorded and handed down the results of their studies, they have obtained the name of glossators. On their copies of the Corpus Juris they were accustomed to write glosses, i. e., brief marginal explanations and remarks. These glosses came at length to be an immense literature. … Here, then, in this school of the glossators, at Bologna, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the awakened mind of Europe was brought to recognize the value of the Corpus Juris, the almost inexhaustible treasure of juristic principles, precepts, conceptions, reasonings, stored up in it."

Jas. Hadley, Introduction to Roman Law, lecture 2.

EDUCATION: Italy University of Bologna.

"In the twelfth century the law school of the University of Bologna eclipsed all others in Europe. The two great branches of legal study in the middle ages, the Roman law and the canon law, began in the teaching of Irnerius and Gratian at Bologna in the first half of the twelfth century. At the beginning of this century the name of university first replaces that of school; and it is said that the great university degree, that of doctor, was first instituted at Bologna, and that the ceremony for conferring it was devised there. From Bologna the degree and its ceremonial travelled to Paris. A bull of Pope Honorius, in 1220, says that the study of 'bomæ literæ' had at that time made the city of Bologna famous throughout the world. Twelve thousand students from all parts of Europe are said to have been congregated there at once. The different nations had their colleges, and of colleges at Bologna there were fourteen. These were founded and endowed by the liberality of private persons; the university professors, the source of attraction to this multitude of students, were paid by the municipality, who found their reward in the fame, business, and importance brought to their town by the university. The municipalities of the great cities of northern and central Italy were not slow in following the example of Bologna; in the thirteenth century Padua, Modena, Piacenza, Parma, Ferrara, had each its university. Frederick II. founded that of Naples in 1224; in the fourteenth century were added those of Pavia, Perugia, Pisa, and Turin. Colleges of examiners, or, as we should say, boards, were created by Papal bull to examine in theology, and by imperial decree to examine in law and medicine. It was in these studies of law and medicine that the Italian universities were chiefly distinguished."

M. Arnold, Schools and Universities on the Continent, chapter 9.

"The Bologna School of jurisprudence was several times threatened with total extinction. In the repeated difficulties with the city the students would march out of the town, bound by a solemn oath not to return; and if a compromise was to be effected, a papal dispensation from that oath must first be obtained. Generally on such occasions, the privileges of the university were reaffirmed and often enlarged. In other cases, a quarrel between the pope and the city, and the ban placed over the latter, obliged the students to leave; and then the city often planned and furthered the removal of the university. King Frederic II., in 1226, during the war against Bologna, dissolved the school of jurisprudence, which seems to have been not at all affected thereby, and he formally recalled that ordinance in the following year. Originally the only school in Bologna was the school of jurisprudence, and in connection with it alone a university could be formed. …. Subsequently eminent teachers of medicine and the liberal arts appeared, and their pupils, too, sought to form a university and to choose their own rector. {697} As late as 1295 this innovation was disputed by the jurists and interdicted by the city, so that they had to connect themselves with the university of jurisprudence. But a few years later we find them already in possession again of a few rectors, and in 1316 their right was formally recognized in a compromise between the university of jurisprudence and the city. The students called themselves 'philosophi et medici' or 'physici'; also by the common name of 'artistæ.' Finally a school of theology, founded by pope Innocent VI., was added in the second half of the 14th century; it was placed under the bishop, and organized in imitation of the school at Paris, so that it was a 'universitas magistrorum,' not 'scholarium.' As, however, by this arrangement the students of theology in the theological university had no civil privileges of their own, they were considered individually as belonging to the 'artistæ.' From this time Bologna had four universities, two of jurisprudence, the one of medicine and philosophy, and the theological, the first two having no connection with the others, forming a unit, and therefore frequently designated as one university."

F. C. Savigny, The Universities of the Middle Ages (Barnard's American Journal of Education, volume 22, pages 278-279).

EDUCATION: Other Universities.

"The oldest and most frequented university in Italy, that of Bologna, is represented as having flourished in the twelfth century. Its prosperity in early times depended greatly on the personal conduct of the principal professors, who, when they were not satisfied with their entertainment, were in the habit of seceding with their pupils to other cities. Thus high schools were opened from time to time in Modena, Reggio, and elsewhere by teachers who broke the oaths that bound them to reside in Bologna, and fixed their centre of education in a rival town. To make such temporary changes was not difficult in an age when what we have to call an university, consisted of masters and scholars, without college buildings, without libraries, without endowments, and without scientific apparatus. The technical name for such institutions seems to have been 'studium scholarium,' Italianised into 'studio' or 'studio pubblico.' Among the more permanent results of these secessions may be mentioned the establishment of the high school at Vicenza by translation from Bologna in 1204, and the opening of a school at Arezzo under similar circumstances in 1215; the great University of Padua first saw the light in consequence of political discords forcing the professors to quit Bologna for a season. The first half of the thirteenth century witnessed the foundation of these 'studi' in considerable numbers. That of Vercelli was opened in 1228, the municipality providing two certified copyists for the convenience of students who might wish to purchase textbooks. In 1224 the Emperor Frederick II., to whom the south of Italy owed a precocious eminence in literature, established the University of Naples by an Imperial diploma. With a view to rendering it the chief seat of learning in his dominions, he forbade the subjects of the Regno to frequent other schools, and suppressed the University of Bologna by letters general. Thereupon Bologna joined the Lombard League, defied the Emperor, and refused to close the schools, which numbered at that period about ten thousand students of various nationalities. In 1227 Frederick revoked his edict, and Bologna remained thenceforward unmolested. Political and internal vicissitudes, affecting all the Italian universities at this period, interrupted the prosperity of that of Naples. In the middle of the thirteenth century Salerno proved a dangerous rival. … An important group of 'studi pubblici' owed their origin to Papal or Imperial charters in the first half of the fourteenth century. That of Perugia was founded in 1307 by a Bull of Clement V. That of Rome dated from 1303, in which year Boniface VIII. gave it a constitution by a special edict; but the translation of the Papal See to Avignon caused it to fall into premature decadence. The University of Pisa had already existed for some years, when it received a charter in 1343 from Clement VI. That of Florence was first founded in 1321. … The subjects taught in the high schools were Canon and Civil Law, Medicine, and Theology. These faculties, important for the professional education of the public, formed the staple of the academical curriculum. Chairs of Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Astronomy were added according to occasion, the last sometimes including the study of judicial astrology. If we enquire how the humanists or professors of classic literature were related to the universities, we find that, at first at any rate, they always occupied a second rank. The permanent teaching remained in the hands of jurists, who enjoyed life engagements at a high rate of pay, while the Latinists and Grecians could only aspire to the temporary occupation of the Chair of Rhetoric, with salaries considerably lower than those of lawyers or physicians."

J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: the Revival of Learning, chapter 3.

"Few of the Italian universities show themselves in their full vigour till the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the increase of wealth rendered a more systematic care for education possible. At first there were generally three sorts of professorships—one for civil law, another for canonical law, the third for medicine; in course of time professorships of rhetoric, of philosophy, and of astronomy were added, the last commonly, though not always, identical with astrology. The salaries varied greatly in different cases. Sometimes a capital sum was paid down. With the spread of culture competition became so active that the different universities tried to entice away distinguished teachers from one another, under which circumstances Bologna is said to have sometimes devoted the half of its public income (20,000 ducats) to the university. The appointments were as a rule made only for a certain time, sometimes for only half a year, so that the teachers were forced to lead a wandering life, like actors. Appointments for life were, however, not unknown. … Of the chairs which have been mentioned, that of rhetoric was especially sought by the humanist; yet it depended only on his familiarity with the matter of ancient learning whether or no he could aspire to those of law, medicine, philosophy, or astronomy. The inward conditions of the science of the day were as variable as the outward conditions of the teacher. Certain jurists and physicians received by far the largest salaries of all, the former chiefly as consulting lawyers for the suits and claims of the state which employed them. … {698} Personal intercourse between the teachers and the taught, public disputations, the constant use of Latin and often of Greek, the frequent changes of lecturers and the scarcity of books, gave the studies of that time a colour which we cannot represent to ourselves without effort. There were Latin schools in every town of the least importance, not by any means merely as preparatory to higher education, but because, next to reading, writing, and arithmetic, the knowledge of Latin was a necessity; and after Latin came logic. It is to be noted particularly that these schools did not depend on the Church, but on the municipality; some of them, too, were merely private enterprises. This school system, directed by a few distinguished humanists, not only attained a remarkable perfection of organisation, but became an instrument of higher education in the modern sense of the phrase."

J. Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy, volume 1, part 3, chapter 5.

EDUCATION: Germany. Prague and its Offspring.

"The earliest university in Germany was that of Prague. It was in 1348, under the Emperor Charles IV., when the taste for letters had revived so signally in Europe, when England may be said to have possessed her two old universities already for three centuries, Paris her Sorbonne already for four, that this university was erected as the first of German Universities. The idea originated in the mind of the Emperor, who was educated in Paris, at the university of that town, and was eagerly taken up by the townspeople of that ancient and wealthy city, for they foresaw that affluence would shower upon them if they could induce a numerous crowd of students to flock together within their walls. But the Pope and the Emperor took an active part in favouring and authorizing the institution; they willingly granted to it wide privileges, and made it entirely independent of Church and State. The teaching of the professors, and the studies of the students, were submitted to no control whatever. After the model of the University of Paris, they divided themselves into different faculties, and made four such divisions—one for divinity, another for medical science, a third for law, and a fourth for philosophy. The last order comprised those who taught and learned the fine arts and the sciences, which two departments were separate at Sorbonne. All the German universities have preserved this outward constitution, and in this, as in many other circumstances, the precedent of Prague has had a prevailing influence on her younger sister institutions. The same thing may be said particularly of the disciplinary tone of the university. In other countries, universities sprang from rigid clerical and monastic institutions, or bore a more or less ecclesiastical character which imposed upon them certain more retired habits, and a severer kind of discipline. Prague took from the beginning a course widely different. The students, who were partly Germans, partly of Slavonian blood, enjoyed a boundless liberty. They lodged in the houses of the townspeople, and by their riches, their mental superiority, and their number (they are recorded to have been as many as twenty thousand in the year 1409), became the undisputed masters of the city. The professors and the inhabitants of Prague, far from checking them, rather protected the prerogatives of the students, for they found out that all their prosperity depended on them. … Not two generations had passed since the erection of an institution thus constituted, before Huss and Jerome of Prague began to teach the necessity of an entire reformation of the Church. The phenomenon is characteristic of the bold spirit of inquiry that must have grown up at the new University. However, the political consequences that attended the promulgation of such doctrines led almost to the dissolution of the University itself. For, the German part of the students broke up, in consequence of repeated and serious quarrels that had taken place with the Bohemian and Slavonic party, and went to Leipzig, where straightway a new and purely German University was erected. While Prague became the seat of a protracted and sanguinary war, a great number of Universities rose into existence around it, and attracted the crowds that had formerly flocked to the Bohemian capital. It appeared as if Germany, though it had received the impulse from abroad, would leave all other countries behind itself in the erection and promotion of these learned institutions, for all the districts of the land vied with each other in creating universities. Thus arose those of Rostock, Ingolstadt, Vienna, Heidelberg, Cologne, Erfurt, Tübingen, Greifswalde, Trèves, Mayence and Bâles-schools which have partly disappeared again during the political storms of subsequent ages. The beginning of the sixteenth century added to them one at Frankfort on the Oder, and another, the most illustrious of all, Wittenberg. Everyone who is acquainted with the history and origin of the Reformation, knows what an important part the latter of these universities took in the weighty transactions of those times. … Wittenberg remained by no means the only champion of Protestantism. At Marburg, Jena, Königsberg, and Helmstadt, universities of a professedly Protestant character were erected. These schools became the cradle and nurseries of the Reformation."

The Universities of Germany (Dublin University Magazine, volume 46, pages 83-85).

"The German universities of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were founded in the following order: Prague, 1348; Vienna, 1388; Erfurt, 1392; Leipsic, 1409; Rostock, 1419; Greifswald, 1456; Freiburg, 1457; Ingolstadt, 1472; Tübingen, 1477; and Mayence, 1477. Thus, it will be seen that they were established in quick succession—an unmistakable proof of the growing scientific interest of the age."

F. V. N. Painter, History of Education, chapter 3, section 5 (k).

EDUCATION: Netherlands.

"Tradition reports that a school had … been founded at Utrecht, by some zealous missionary, in the time of Charles Martel, at which his son Pepin received his education. However this may have been, the renown of the Utrecht School of St. Martin is of very ancient date. … During the invasion by the Normans, this school at Utrecht was suppressed, but was reëstablished in 917, and regained its former renown. The Emperor, Henry the Fowler, placed here his three sons, Otto, Henry and Bruno, to be educated, of whom the last became afterward archbishop of Cologne and archduke of Lottringen, and was noted for his extraordinary learning and friendship for the poet Prudentius. At the beginning of the 12th century, Utrecht possessed no less than five flourishing schools, several of which had each a 'rector' in addition to the priests who had the general control. At about the same time, several convents became distinguished as educational institutions, especially those of Egmond, Nymwegen, Middleburg, in Zealand, and Aduwert, near Gröningen. {699} In Holland, as in Belgium, in addition to the schools that were attached to the cathedrals, convents, and chapters, there were established in the course of the twelfth century, by the more wealthy communities, public schools especially designed for the instruction of the citizens and laity. It is also worthy of notice that the authority to open such schools was always derived from the counts—by whom it was conferred, sometimes upon the cities as an especial privilege, and sometimes upon merely private persons as a mark of particular favor. The jurisdiction of the feudal lords was the same here as in Belgium; but while in the latter country, with the exception perhaps of the elementary schools in some of the cities, the right of supervision everywhere devolved upon the chapters, instruction in these public schools of Holland was wholly withdrawn from the clergy, and they were made essentially secular in their character. The privilege of thus establishing schools was conferred upon some of the cities at the following dates:

Dort, by Count Floris V., A. D. 1290; the Hague, 1322; Leyden, 1324; and Rotterdam in 1328, by William III.; Delft and Amsterdam, in 1334, by William IV.; Leyden again, 1357; Haarlem, 1389; Alkmar, 1398; Hoorn, 1358 and 1390; the Hague, 1393; Schiedam and Ondewater, 1394; and Rotterdam, in 1402, by Albert of Bavaria.

These schools, adds Stallaert, on the authority of Buddingh, were generally styled 'School en Schryfambacht,' 'Schoole en Kostern,' (school and writing offices, schools and clerks' houses,) and the 'Schoolmijsters' (school-masters) were looked upon as professional men or craftsmen—as was the case also in Belgium, where they formed distinct guilds and fraternities. These public schools of Holland were divided into 'large' and 'small' schools, (groote en bijschoolen,) Latin being taught in the first division. The institution at Zwolle, attained special notoriety in the fourteenth century, under the direction of the celebrated Johan Cele. According to Thomas à Kempis and Ten Bussche, its pupils numbered about a thousand, gathered from Holland, Belgium, and the principal provinces of Germany."

Public Instruction in Holland (Barnard's American Journal of Education, volume 14).

EDUCATION: England. Early Oxford.

"The University of Oxford did not spring into being in any particular year, or at the bidding of any particular founder: it was not established by any formal charter of incorporation. Taking its rise in a small and obscure association of teachers and learners, it developed spontaneously into a large and important body, long before its existence was recognised by prince or by prelate. There were certainly schools at Oxford in the reign of Henry I., but the previous history of the place does not throw much light on their origin, or explain the causes of their popularity. The town seems to have grown up under the shadow of a nunnery, which is said to have been founded by St. Frideswyde as far back as the eighth century. Its authentic annals, however, begin with the year 912, when it was occupied and annexed by Edward the Elder, King of the West Saxons. … Oxford was considered a place of great strategical importance in the eleventh century. Its position on the borders of Mercia and Wessex rendered it also, particularly convenient for parleys between Englishmen and Danes, and for great national assemblies. … Retaining for a while its rank as one of the chief centres of political life in the south of England, and as a suitable meeting-place for parliaments and synods, Oxford became thenceforward more and more distinctively known as a seat of learning and a nursery of clerks. The schools which existed at Oxford before the reign of King John, are so seldom and so briefly noticed in contemporary records, that it would be difficult to show how they developed into a great university, if it were not for the analogy of kindred institutions in other countries. There can be little doubt, however, that the idea of a university, the systems of degrees and faculties, and the nomenclature of the chief academical officers, were alike imported into England from abroad. … In the earliest and broadest sense of the term, a university had no necessary connexion with schools or literature, being merely a community of individuals bound together by some more or less acknowledged tie. Regarded collectively in this light, the inhabitants of any particular town might be said to constitute a university, and in point of fact the Commonalty of the townsmen of Oxford was sometimes described as a university in formal documents of the middle ages. The term was, however, specially applied to the whole body of persons frequenting the schools of a large studium. Ultimately it came to be employed in a technical sense as synonymous with studium, to denote the institution itself. This last use of the term seems to be of English origin, for the University of Oxford is mentioned as such in writs and ordinances of the years 1238, 1240, and 1253, whereas the greater seat of learning on the banks of the Seine was, until the year 1263, styled 'the University of the Masters,' or 'the University of the Scholars,' of Paris. The system of academical degrees dates from the second half of the twelfth century."

H. C. M. Lyte, A History of the University of Oxford, chapter 1.

"In the early Oxford … of the twelfth and most of the thirteenth centuries, colleges with their statutes were unknown. The University was the only corporation of the learned, and she struggled into existence after hard fights with the town, the Jews, the Friars, the Papal courts. The history of the University begins with the thirteenth century. She may be said to have come into being as soon as she possessed common funds and rents, as soon as fines were assigned, or benefactions contributed to the maintenance of scholars. Now the first recorded fine is the payment of fifty-two shillings by the townsmen of Oxford as part of the compensation for the hanging of certain clerks. In the year 1214 the Papal Legate, in a letter to his 'beloved sons in Christ, the burgesses of Oxford,' bade them excuse the 'scholars studying in Oxford' half the rent of their halls, or hospitia, for the space of ten years. The burghers were also to do penance, and to feast the poorer students once a year; but the important point is, that they had to pay that large yearly fine 'propter suspendium clericorum'—all for the hanging of the clerks. Twenty-six years after this decision of the Legate, Robert Grossteste, the great Bishop of Lincoln, organized the payment and distribution of the fine, and founded the first of the chests, the chest of St. Frideswyde. {700} These chests were a kind of Mont de Piété, and to found them was at first the favourite form of benefaction. Money was left in this or that chest, from which students and masters would borrow, on the security of pledges, which were generally books, cups, daggers, and so forth. Now, in this affair of 1214 we have a strange passage of history, which happily illustrates the growth of the University. The beginning of the whole affair was the quarrel with the town, which in 1209, had hanged two clerks, 'in contempt of clerical liberty.' The matter was taken up by the Legate—in those bad years of King John, the Pope's viceroy in England—and out of the humiliation of the town the University gained money, privileges, and halls at low rental. These were precisely the things that the University wanted. About these matters there was a constant strife, in which the Kings as a rule, took part with the University. … Thus gradually the University got the command of the police, obtained privileges which enslaved the city, and became masters where they had once been despised, starveling scholars. … The result, in the long run, was that the University received from Edward III. 'a most large charter, containing many liberties, some that they had before, and others that he had taken away from the town.' Thus Edward granted to the University 'the custody of the assize of bread, wine, and ale,' the supervising of measures and weights, the sole power of clearing the streets of the town and suburbs. Moreover, the Mayor and the chief Burghers were condemned yearly to a sort of public penance and humiliation on St. Scholastica's Day. Thus, by the middle of the fourteenth century, the strife of Town and Gown had ended in the complete victory of the latter."