THE UNIVERSITIES OF MASTERS
The Guild or Universitas which grew up in the Studium Generale of
Paris was a Society of masters, not of students. The Studium Generale
was, in origin, connected with the Cathedral Schools, and recognition
as a Master was granted by the Chancellor of the Cathedral, whose duty
it was to confer it upon every competent scholar who asked for it. The
successful applicant was admitted by the existing masters into their
Society, and this admission or inception was the origin of degrees in
the University of Paris. The date of the growth of an organised Guild
is uncertain; Dr Rashdall, after a survey of the evidence, concludes
that "it is a fairly safe inference that the period 1150-1170--probably
the latter years of that period--saw the birth of the University of
Paris." Such organisation as existed in the twelfth century was slight
and customary, depending, as the student-universities of Bologna and
in other medieval guilds, upon no external authority. The successors
of these early masters, writing in the middle of the thirteenth
century, relate how their predecessors, men reverend in character (p. 042)
and famous for learning, decided, as the number of their pupils
increased, that they could do their work better if they became a
united body, and that they therefore formed themselves into a College
or University, on which Church and State conferred many privileges.
The bond of union they describe as a "jus speciale" ("si quodam essent
juris specialis vinculo sociati"), and this conception explains the
appearance of their earliest code of statutes in the first decade of
the thirteenth century. The Guild of masters, at Paris, like the Guild
of students at Bologna, could use with advantage the threat of a
migration, and, after a violent quarrel with the town in the year
1200, they received special privileges from Philip Augustus. Some
years later, Pope Innocent III. permitted the "scholars of Paris" to
elect a procurator or proctor to represent their interests in law-suits
at Rome. Litigation at Rome was connected with disputes with the
Chancellor of the Cathedral. Already the scholars of Paris had
complained to the Pope about the tyranny of the Chancellor, and
Innocent had supported their cause, remarking that when he himself
studied at Paris he had never heard of scholars being treated in this
fashion. It moved and astonished the Pope not a little that the
Chancellor should attempt to exact an oath of obedience and payment
of money from the masters, and, in the end, that official was (p. 043)
compelled to give up his claim to demand fees or oaths of fealty or
obedience for a licence to teach, and to relax any oaths that had
already been taken. The masters, as Dr Rashdall points out, already
possessed the weapon of boycotting, and ordering their students to
boycott, a teacher upon whom the Chancellor conferred a licence
against the wish of their guild, but they could not at first compel
him to grant a licence to anyone whom they desired to admit. After the
Papal intervention of 1212, the Chancellor was bound to licence a
candidate recommended by the masters.
In the account of their own history, from which we have already
quoted, the Parisian masters speak of their venerable "gignasium
litterarum" as divided into four faculties, Theology, Law, Medicine,
and Philosophy, and they compare the four streams of learning to the
four rivers of Paradise. The largest and most important was the
Faculty of Arts, and the masters of that Faculty were the protagonists
in the struggle with the Chancellor, a struggle which continued long
after the intervention of Innocent III. In the course of this long and
successful conflict, the Faculty of Arts developed an internal
organisation, consisting of four nations, distinguished as the French,
the Normans, the Picards, and the English. Each nation elected a
proctor, and the four proctors or other representatives of the (p. 044)
nations elected a Rector, who was the Head of the Faculty of Arts.
The division into nations and the title of Rector may have been copied
from Bologna, but the organisation at Paris was essentially different.
The Parisian nations were governed by masters, not by students, and
whereas, at Bologna, the artists were an insignificant minority, at
Paris, the Rector became, by the end of the thirteenth century, the
most powerful official of the University, and, by the middle of the
fourteenth, was recognised as its Head. The superior Faculties of
Theology, Canon Law, and Medicine, though they possessed independent
constitutions under their own Deans, consisted largely of men who had
taken a Master's or a Bachelor's degree in Arts, and, from the middle
of the thirteenth century, they took an oath to the Rector, which was
held to be binding even after they became doctors. The non-artist
members of these Faculties were not likely to be able to resist an
authority whose existence was generally welcomed as the centre of the
opposition to the Chancellor. Ultimately, the whole University passed
under the sway of the Rector, and the power of the Chancellor was
restricted to granting the _jus ubique docendi_ as the representative
of the Pope. Even this was little more than a formality, for the
Chancellor "ceased," says Dr Rashdall, "to have any real control over
the grant or refusal of Licences, except in so far as he retained (p. 045)
the nomination of the Examiners in Arts."
At Oxford, the University was also a Guild of masters, but Oxford was
not a cathedral city, and there was no conflict with the Bishop or the
Chancellor. In the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the
thirteenth century, the masters of the Studium probably elected a
Rector or Head in imitation of the Parisian Chancellor. After the
quarrel with the citizens, which led to the migration to Cambridge,
and when King John had submitted to the Pope, the masters were able to
obtain an ordinance from the Papal legate determining the punishment
of the offenders, and providing against the recurrence of such
incidents. The legate ordered that if the citizens should seize the
person of a clerk, his surrender might be demanded by "the Bishop of
Lincoln, or the Archdeacon of the place or his Official, or the
Chancellor, or whomsoever the Bishop of Lincoln shall depute to this
office." The clause lays stress upon the authority of the Bishop of
Lincoln, which must in no way be diminished by any action of the
townsmen. The ecclesiastical authority of the Bishop was welcomed by
the University as a protection against the town, and the Chancellor
was too far away from Lincoln to press the privileges of the Diocese
or the Cathedral against the clerks who were under his special (p. 046)
care. The Oxford Chancellor was a master of the Studium, and, though
he was the representative of the Bishop, he was also the Head of the
masters guild, and from very early times was elected by the masters.
Thus he came to identify himself with the University, and his office
increased in importance as privileges were conferred upon the
University by kings and popes. No Rectorship grew up as a rival to the
Chancellorship, though some of the functions of the Parisian Rector
were performed at Oxford by the Proctors. There were only two "Nations"
at Oxford, for the Oxford masters were, as a rule, Englishmen; men
from north of the Trent formed the Northern Nation, and the rest of
England the Southern Nation. Scotsmen were classed as Northerners, and
Welshmen and Irishmen as Southerners. The division into Nations was
short-lived, and the two Rectors or Proctors, though still
distinguished as Northern and Southern, soon became representatives
elected by the whole Faculty of Arts. As at Paris, the Faculty of Arts
was the moving spirit in the University, and Theology, Law, and
Medicine never developed at Oxford any independent organisation. The
proctors, as Dr Rashdall has shown, thus became the Executive of the
University as a whole, and not merely of the Faculty of Arts.
An essential difference between Bologna and its two great northern (p. 047)
sisters lies in the fact that, at Paris and at Oxford, masters and
scholars alike were all clerks, possessing the tonsure and wearing the
clerical garb, though not necessarily even in minor orders. They could
thus claim the privileges of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and at
Oxford this jurisdiction was exercised by the Chancellor, who also,
along with the proctors, was responsible for academic discipline and
could settle disputes between members of the University. In this, the
University of Oxford had a position of independence which Paris never
achieved, for though the Parisian Rector's court dealt with cases of
discipline and with internal disputes, criminal jurisdiction remained
the prerogative of the Bishop. In the middle of the fourteenth
century, royal grants of privileges to the University of Oxford
culminated in the subjection of the city, and from the middle of the
fifteenth "the burghers lived in their own town almost as the helots
or subjects of a conquering people." (_Cf._ Rashdall, vol. ii. chap.
12, sec. 3). The constitution of Oxford was closely imitated at
Cambridge, where the Head of the University was also the Chancellor,
and the executive consisted of two rectors or proctors. In the
fifteenth century the University freed itself from the ecclesiastical
jurisdiction of the Bishop of Ely.
Germany possessed no universities before the fourteenth century. (p. 048)
Prague was founded in 1347-8, and was followed before 1400 by Vienna,
Erfurt, Heidelberg, and Cologne, and in the first quarter of the next
century by Würzburg, Leipsic, Rostock, and in the Low Countries by
Louvain. The first Scottish University dates from the early years of
the fifteenth century. While the provincial universities of France
tended to follow Bologna rather than Paris as their model, the German
universities approximated to the Parisian type, and although the
founders of the Scottish universities were impressed by some of the
conditions of the student-universities, and provided for them a
theoretical place in their constitutions, yet the three medieval
Scottish universities of Scotland, in their actual working, more
nearly resembled the master type.