THE UNIVERSITY IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
[Sidenote: Decline in numbers and studies]
The golden age of mediæval Oxford had culminated in the fourteenth
century, and the fifteenth century ushered in a period of intellectual
stagnation, which lasted for at least sixty years. Many causes, both
external and internal, combined to produce this result. The nation
itself, exhausted by the vain effort to conquer France, and roused from
its long dream of Imperial ambition, was hopeless and disheartened
until it was plunged into the most sanguinary of English Civil Wars.
The ecclesiastical independence of the English Church, which had defied
the most powerful of mediæval Popes, and had been fortified by the
recent Statutes of Provisors and Præmunire, was seriously threatened
by the growth of Ultramontane influences, while its revenues were
assailed by democratic agitation. The revolutionary petition of the
Commons, addressed to Henry IV., for the wholesale appropriation of
Church property to secular and charitable uses, boded no good to
Universities, which ranked as ecclesiastical bodies, and were taxed
with the clergy, though anti-monastic in their corporate spirit and in
the organisation of their colleges. Moreover, this petition had been
speedily followed by the actual confiscation of property belonging to
alien priories. Soon afterwards, the French Wars and Wars of the Roses
attracted into camps many a student who might otherwise have frequented
the University lecture rooms; the law no longer drew all its recruits
from University clerks; and even the incumbents of English livings
were sometimes chosen from the ranks of the regular clergy without
University training. It is possible that the rise and spread of the
Wycliffite movement at Oxford may have prejudiced it in the eyes of the
English hierarchy, as it certainly did in those of the Popes. At all
events, there is abundant evidence both of the fact that candidates
for Holy Orders resorted to Oxford in diminished numbers, and of the
construction which the University authorities put on that fact. In
1417, and again in 1438, the Archbishop and Bishops in Convocation
issued an appeal to patrons of benefices, calling upon them to give
a preference to University graduates. The memorial addressed to
Convocation on behalf of the University in 1438 complains that her
halls were deserted, and that not one thousand remained out of the many
thousands reported to have attended the schools of Oxford in the last
age—when, as we learn from a Royal charter (of 1355), ‘a multitude of
nobles, gentry, strangers, and others continually flocked thither.’ It
is stated that in 1450 only twenty out of two hundred schools which had
once been filled continued to be used for purposes of education. A few
years later we find a license granted to poor scholars, authorising
them to beg for alms—a practice of which Sir Thomas More speaks as if
it were not obsolete in his own time. It was to meet the necessities
of these destitute students that Archbishop Chichele established a
new University Chest; and it was for the relief of the _pauperes et
indigentes_, no less than for the support of the secular clergy, whose
decline at Oxford is amply attested by his charter, that he afterwards
founded the great college of All Souls.
[Sidenote: University delegates at the Councils of Constance and Basle]
Notwithstanding this decline, and the undoubted decay of learning, we
must not exaggerate either the actual degeneracy of the University or
its loss of reputation in Europe. No doubt, the French Wars tended to
weaken its ancient alliance with the great University of Paris, and
the growth of a native English literature under the inspiration of
Chaucer and Wyclif may well have contributed to its isolation, until
it came under the spell of the Italian Renaissance. But it is an error
to assert that Oxford was ‘nowhere to be found in the great Church
Councils of the fifteenth century.’[9] On the contrary, it was very
ably represented, both at Constance in 1414 and at Basle in 1431. At
the former of these Councils, Henry de Abendon, afterwards Warden of
Merton, defended with signal effect the claim of England to precedence
over Spain, and of Oxford to precedence over Salamanca. In order to
defray the expense of sending ‘orators’ to Basle, the University, in
its poverty, solicited a contribution, ‘were it ever so small,’ from
the Convocation of the Clergy. It found a worthy delegate, however, in
John Kemp, also of Merton, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, who, at
the subsequent Council of Florence, was made a Cardinal by the Pope.
[Sidenote: Foundation of Lincoln and All Souls’ Colleges]
Nor must we forget the great collegiate institutions which owe their
origin to this obscure period. The first of these, Lincoln College, was
founded in 1427, on a much humbler scale than New College, by Richard
Flemmyng, Bishop of Lincoln, who, having been a zealous promoter,
became a fanatical opponent of Wyclif’s doctrines, and distinguished
himself at the Council of Siena by attacks against the Hussites. His
main object was to extirpate the Wycliffite heresy, and he specially
provided that any Fellow tainted with these heresies was ‘to be cast
out, like a diseased sheep, from the fold of the college.’ All Souls,
founded in 1438 by Archbishop Chichele, was a far grander monument
of academical piety and was almost unique in its constitution. The
college was specially designed to be a chantry, but it was also to
be a place of study, and was to some extent modelled on New College,
where Chichele himself was educated. There were to be forty scholars,
being clerks, bound to study without intermission, twenty-four of whom
were to cultivate Arts and philosophy or theology, and sixteen the
canon or civil law. Magdalen College was founded in 1457 by William of
Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, upon a plan borrowed from New College,
but without the peculiar feature of organic connection with a public
school, though its founder had been himself the head-master both of
Eton and of Winchester. There are clear traces in the statutes of the
coming Renaissance. Theology remains supreme, as at New College, but
moral and natural philosophy take the place of civil and canon law.
Grammar is preferred to logic, and even Latin verses are recognised.
Moreover, the lecturers in divinity and the two philosophies are to
instruct not only the college but the whole University.
[Sidenote: Extension of University buildings: the Divinity School and
the Bodleian Library]
While the collegiate system was thus expanding, and classical
scholarship was beginning to germinate under its shelter, the resources
of the University were enriched by two important accessions—the edifice
of the Old Schools, and the Library presented by the ‘good’ Duke
Humphry of Gloucester. In the early part of the fifteenth century,
thirty-two ‘schools’ were ranged along School Street, between the west
end of St. Mary’s and the city wall, near the present theatre. These
schools had superseded the simple chambers which the University had
a prescriptive right to hire in the houses of private citizens. Many
of them belonged to Oseney Abbey, and in the year 1439 some fourteen
of these, being ruinous, were taken down and rebuilt by the Abbot,
Thomas Hokenorton. The fabric erected by him is described as a long
pile of stone masonry, wholly destitute of architectural effect,
consisting of two stories, and divided into ten schools, five above
and five below, which, however, possessed no monopoly of University
lectures or exercises, since these continued to be carried on in other
public schools, if not in private lecture rooms, despite prohibitory
statutes. One reason why School Street was selected as the privileged
quarter for lecturing was doubtless that it immediately adjoined St.
Mary’s Church, which contained the old Congregation-house, in which the
University held all its solemn meetings, and which, in the Middle Ages,
had served at once as the court-house, the legislative chamber, the
examination-room, the public treasury, the hall of assembly, and the
place of worship, for the whole University. In this church theological
lectures had now been given for a century, since the Dominicans and
Franciscans had been compelled to abandon their practice of teaching
divinity to University students within their own walls, and the
University could afford to despise the rivalry of other religious
Orders lodged in the suburbs, at a distance from School Street. In 1426
or 1427 a vacant plot was purchased by the University from Balliol
College, and in 1480 the present Divinity School was finally opened for
the greatest of the faculties, by the aid of liberal contributions from
the Benedictine monks, Archbishop Chichele, several cathedral bodies,
Duke Humphry, and the executors of Cardinal Beaufort, Archbishop Kemp,
and Edmund Duke of Somerset of 1447. In the meantime, Duke Humphry,
acceding to a suggestion from the University, had initiated the
erection of a Public Library over the Divinity School. The building
was retarded by the withdrawal of the masons, under Royal mandate,
for works at Windsor and Eton, nor was it completed till 1480, by the
aid of Thomas Kemp, Bishop of London, who contributed 1,000 marks,
and has been regarded as a second founder. The original collection of
books presented by Duke Humphry to the University in 1439 consisted of
129 volumes only, but it was supplemented by a second gift in 1443.
Still, the whole University Library, comprising the previous legacies
of Angerville and Cobham, is said to have contained no more than 500
volumes when it was dispersed at the Reformation. Duke Humphry is also
said to have instituted a professorial Chair for Arts and Philosophy,
which, however, never came into operation, perhaps because the means
were not forthcoming to endow it adequately. For it is certain that
at this period the resources of the University were miserably small,
and chiefly wasted in the enormous expense of suits at the Court of
Rome, whose appellate jurisdiction it had always respected, and whose
immediate intervention it often invoked.[10]
[Sidenote: Final organisation of mediæval lectures and examinations]
The mediæval system of academical studies and examinations may be
considered to have reached its maturity in the middle of the fifteenth
century. At this period the University enjoyed comparative repose,
and its constitution was fully organised, though its vigour, as we
have seen, was grievously impaired. Nine colleges had already been
founded, and, by the statute passed in 1432 for the suppression of
‘chamber-dekyns,’ all members of the University were required to be
inmates of some college or hall, except those who should be specially
licensed by the Chancellor to live in lay houses. By another statute
of the same year, the discipline of the University had been further
secured by a peremptory rule that all principals of halls should
be graduates, or qualified by learning and character to rule their
respective households.[11] The proctorial authority was now firmly
established under the ordinance of 1343. Courses of public lectures
were constantly delivered on all the subjects recognised by the
University in the official schools, and private instruction was
supplied to their own inmates by the various colleges and halls.
[Sidenote: University curriculum]
The institution of an University curriculum, or a set course of books
or subjects to be studied by candidates for degrees in the various
faculties, may be dated from the statutes given to the University
of Paris by the Cardinal Legate, Robert de Courçon, at the very
beginning of the thirteenth century. The Oxford curriculum seems to
have varied but little between the age of the schoolmen and that of
the Renaissance. It is practically certain that admission to the
University was guarded by no entrance examination. Grammar was treated
as the essential foundation of all knowledge, and the University
abounded in grammar schools, but the superstructure raised upon this
foundation appears to have been mainly logical. Both grammar and
logic, however, represented accomplishments which in that age were
supposed to be useful—grammar as giving the power of reading and
writing Latin; logic, supplemented by rhetoric, as the instrument
of controversy and persuasion. Since proficiency in all studies was
tested by disputation, logic was naturally elevated into a position
of supremacy. A statute passed in 1408 required all candidates for
what is now called a B.A. degree to become ‘_sophistæ generales_,’ and
practise themselves in logical disputations for a year at least in the
‘Parvisum,’ or classrooms for beginners, before offering themselves
for the preliminary ordeal of Responsions. This examination seems to
have consisted in arguing and answering questions on a given thesis
(_respondere ad quæstionem_ or _de quæstione_), and the student who
had passed it at the end of his first year was still bound under
this statute to hear lectures on prescribed books in three branches
of the Faculty of Arts—logic, mathematics, and grammar, which
always ranked lowest in the scale of studies. The exercises which
constituted ‘determination’[12] were conducted during Lent in the
schools of Masters apparently selected by the candidates themselves,
for the last clause in the statute actually protects them against
impressment or solicitation by Masters desirous of forcing them into
their own schools. The examination was mainly, if not exclusively,
logical and grammatical, the duty of the examining master being to
stop the candidate if he should wander into other subjects or use
unsound arguments. Nothing is said in this statute of candidates once
admitted to determine being rejected for incompetence, but there are
rules to prevent their being admitted at all, unless duly qualified by
character, ability, age, and even stature.
[Sidenote: Statute of 1431, regulating ‘inception’]
The leading statute which regulated the more important act of
‘inception,’ or admission to the M.A. degree, was passed in 1431. It
opens with a somewhat pedantic and solemn preamble, setting forth that
everyone who aspires to be entitled a Master or Professor of Arts ought
to have undergone a complete training in the seven sciences and the
three philosophies. These seven sciences were no other than the old
Trivials and Quadrivials which had become the standard subjects of
education ever since the revival of learning under Charlemagne—grammar,
rhetoric and logic; arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy. The
three so-called philosophies were natural, moral, and metaphysical. The
statute proceeds to ordain that all who are presented for ‘inception’
shall have satisfied all the requirements for ‘determination,’ and
shall also have regularly and earnestly attended lectures in the seven
branches of knowledge here called the seven liberal Arts, as well as
in the three philosophies, during eight years for at least thirty
‘reading’ days in each year,[13] according to a certain graduated
order prescribed in the statute itself. Thus, grammar was to occupy
one year, rhetoric three years, logic three years, arithmetic one
year, music one year, geometry two years, astronomy two years, natural
philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysical philosophy three years
each. The orthodox text-books in which each subject is to be studied
are specifically mentioned, and include Priscian, Boethius, and Euclid,
but, above all, Aristotle, who is recognised as the supreme authority
on rhetoric, logic, and all three philosophies.
[Sidenote: Duties of regent masters]
Having fulfilled all these conditions, and procured all the necessary
certificates of his moral and intellectual competence, the bachelor
applying for a M.A. degree was presented before the Chancellor and
Proctors in Congregation, when, after taking certain oaths, one
of which bound him not to foment quarrels between Northerners and
Southerners, he was officially licensed to deliver lectures. On this
ceremony, which constituted him a Master of Arts, the statute of 1431
is silent, but we know from other sources that a M.A. degree was
chiefly, if not exclusively, sought as a passport to ‘inception.’ This
inception, which involved much expense[14] and was attended by many
formalities, consisted in taking possession of a school, and solemnly
commencing a course of lectures as a teaching or ‘regent’ master. It
is provided in the statute that at the end of every term (or year)
the proctors shall ascertain the number of regent masters willing
to lecture, and shall divide them according to seniority, into ten
companies as nearly equal in number as possible. The junior company,
with the superintendents of grammar schools, are to lecture in grammar,
and the rest are apparently to be so ranged in an ascending scale that
the highest subjects may be assigned to the seniors. It is expressly
ordained, in order to exclude forbidden lore, that none shall lecture
in any books except those allowed by statute. The mode of lecturing
is also strictly prescribed. First, the text is to be read out, then
its substance and meaning are to be explained; afterwards special
passages are to be noted, and lastly, questions are to be raised and
discussed, but only such as naturally arise out of the text, so that
no prohibited sciences may be taught. Such provisions for public
lecturing were necessary before either an University professoriate or
a system of college tuition was developed, and all regent masters,
unless exempted, were statutably bound to lecture for nearly two years
after inception. During this period they were also specially bound to
attend the University ‘Congregation,’ by which degrees were granted,
and even when they became non-regents they were liable to be summoned
for this purpose by the University Bedel, who sounded a bell in order
to make a quorum; whence that assembly was technically called the House
of Regents and Non-Regents. In the earliest times, when it consisted of
teachers only, it had been the sole legislature of the University. It
seems, however, that when degrees were more and more sought as titles
of honour or certificates of proficiency, and graduates frequently
obtained exemptions from the duty of teaching, another more select
body, called the ‘Black Congregation,’ assumed the right of discussing
measures to be afterwards laid before the ‘Great Congregation,’ as it
then came to be called, or ‘Convocation,’ as it was called in later
times, when the preliminary assembly had at last usurped the name of
‘Congregation.’
[Sidenote: Residence for degrees in the higher faculties]
The faculty of Arts, however, was but one of several, though it
embraced the great majority of graduates, and maintained an undisputed
supremacy. The ‘science’ of grammar always filled a subordinate
position, and its requirements were less onerous, but in all the
superior faculties of civil or canon law, medicine, and theology, the
ordinary rule was to have graduated first in Arts, and afterwards to
have responded, disputed, and determined in the studies of the faculty
before incepting and receiving the final degree of Master or Doctor,
then practically synonymous. Even those who had graduated in Arts were
required to study theology five years before their ‘opponency’ or
degree-examination, while those who had not so graduated were compelled
to go through a seven years’ course; and in either case two years
more of probation were exacted before permission could be obtained to
lecture on the ‘Sentences.’ Thus an Oxford career occupied far more of
life in those days than in our own, and academical residence certainly
extended over a greater part of each year. It was a natural consequence
that University influences left a far deeper impress on the characters
and minds of the students, and that such movements as the Renaissance
and the Reformation passed through a long period of academical
incubation before they acquired a hold over the mass of the nation.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Huber’s _English Universities_, vol. 1, ch. vi., sect. 80.
[10] An instance of this may be found in the care taken by Archbishop
Chichele, in 1439, to procure a Bull from Pope Eugenius IV. for the
foundation of All Souls’ College.
[11] These statutes were little more than repetitions or confirmations
of ordinances made by King Henry V. in 1421.
[12] The meaning of ‘determination’ is still the subject of dispute.
Mr. Boase, in the preface to his _Register of the University of
Oxford_, explains it thus: ‘After taking his degree, the bachelor
“determined,” that is, instead of disputing himself, he presided
over disputations, and gave out his determination or decision on the
questions discussed.’
[13] This seems the most probable interpretation of a somewhat obscure
passage in the statute, which speaks of _octo annorum terminos_, and
afterwards of _tres terminos_ or _duo terminos anni_, as if _terminus_
signified a period, and not an academical Term. It would be almost
impossible to attend all the lectures here required for thirty reading
days in each Term.
[14] It is stated that, so far back as 1268, the inceptors in civil
law were numerous enough to overflow the Oxford hostels, and to be
quartered in Oseney Abbey. In 1431 the expense to be incurred in
scholastic banquets on inception in arts was limited by statute.