Life in the Medieval University | Page 3

by the monks, and, after
them, by the friars, in the affection and the respect of the nation.
Outside the kingdom of England the fourteenth century was also a great
period in the growth of universities and colleges, to which, all (p. 004)
over Europe, privileges and endowments were granted by popes,
emperors, kings, princes, bishops and municipalities. To attempt to
indicate the various causes and conditions which, in different countries,
led to the growth, in numbers and in wealth, of institutions for the
pursuit of learning would be to wander from our special topic; but we
may take the period from the middle of the fourteenth to the middle of
the fifteenth century as that in which the medieval University made its
greatest appeal to the imagination of the peoples of Europe. Its
institutional forms had become definite, its terminology fixed, and the
materials for a study of the life of the fourteenth century student are
abundant. The conditions of student life varied, of course, with country
and climate, and with the differences in the constitutions of individual
universities and in their relations to Church and State. No single picture
of the medieval student can be drawn, but it will be convenient to
choose the second half of the fourteenth century, or the first half of the
fifteenth, as the central point of our investigation.
We have already used technical terms, "University," "College,"
"Student," which require elucidation, and others will arise in the course
of our inquiry. What is a University? At the present day a University is,
in England, a corporation whose power of granting (p. 005) certain
degrees is recognised by the State; but nothing of this is implied in the
word "University." Its literal meaning is simply an association. Recent
writers on University history have pointed out that Universitas vestra,
in a letter addressed to a body of persons, means merely "the whole of
you" and that the term was by no means restricted to learned bodies. It
was frequently applied to municipal corporations; Dr Rashdall, in his
learned work, tells us that it is used by medieval writers in addressing
"all faithful Christian people," and he quotes an instance in which Pisan

captives at Genoa in the end of the thirteenth century formed
themselves into a "Universitas carceratorum." The word "College"
affords us no further enlightenment. It, too, means literally a
community or association, and, unlike the sister term University, it has
never become restricted to a scholastic association. The Senators of the
"College of Justice" are the judges of the Supreme Court in Scotland.
We must call in a third term to help us. In what we should describe as
the early days of European universities, there came into use a phrase
sometimes written as Studium Universale or Studium Commune, but
more usually Studium Generale. It was used in much the same sense in
which we speak of a University to-day, and a short sketch of its (p. 006)
history is necessary for the solution of our problem.
The twelfth century produced in Europe a renewal of interest and a
revival of learning, brought about partly by the influence of great
thinkers like St Anselm and Abelard, and partly by the discovery of lost
works of Aristotle. The impulse thus given to study resulted in an
increase in the numbers of students, and students were naturally
attracted to schools where masters and teachers possessed, or had left
behind them, great names. At Bologna there was a great teacher of the
Civil Law in the first quarter of the twelfth century, and a great writer
on Canon Law lived there in the middle of the same century. To
Bologna, therefore, there flocked students of law, though not of law
alone. In the schools of Paris there were great masters of philosophy
and theology to whom students crowded from all parts of Europe.
Many of the foreign students at Paris were Englishmen, and when, at
the time of Becket's quarrel with Henry II., the disputes between the
sovereigns of England and France led to the recall of English students
from the domain of their King's enemy, there grew up at Oxford a great
school or Studium, which acquired something of the fame of Paris and
Bologna. A struggle between the clerks who studied at Oxford and the
people of the town broke out at the time of John's defiance of the
(p. 007) Papacy, when the King outlawed the clergy of England, and
this struggle led to the rise of a school at Cambridge. In Italy the
institutions of the Studium at Bologna were copied at Modena, at
Reggio, at Vicenza, at Arezzo, at Padua, and elsewhere, and in 1244 or

1245 Pope Innocent IV. founded a Studium of a different constitution,
in dependence upon the Papal Court.