Civilis_ of Justinian, for the customary law of mediaeval Europe was
never a subject of university study. The central book was the _Digest_,
summarizing the ripest fruits of Roman legal science, and it was
their mastery of the _Digest_ that gives preëminence to the mediaeval
civilians. They brought the resources of the whole _Corpus_ to bear
on each passage in an elaborate gloss, and they showed refinement
and subtlety of legal thought analogous to that of the scholastic
philosophers. After all, “law is a form of scholasticism.” But whereas
the scholastic method in philosophy has lost hold on much of the modern
world, the work of the glossators still survives. “In many respects,”
says Rashdall,[5] “the work of the School of Bologna represents the
most brilliant achievement of the intellect of mediaeval Europe. The
mediaeval mind had, indeed, a certain natural affinity for the study
and development of an already existing body of Law. The limitations
of its knowledge of the past and of the material Universe were not,
to any appreciable extent, a bar to the mastery of a Science which
concerns itself simply with the business and the relations of every-day
life. The Jurist received his Justinian on authority as the Theologian
received the Canonical and Patristic writings, or the Philosopher his
Aristotle, while he had the advantage of receiving it in the original
language. It had only to be understood, to be interpreted, developed,
and applied.... The works of these men are, perhaps, the only
productions of mediaeval learning to which the modern Professor of any
science whatever may turn, not merely for the sake of their historical
interest, not merely in the hope of finding ideas of a suggestive
value, but with some possibility of finding a solution of the doubts,
difficulties and problems which still beset the modern student.”
The canon law was closely associated with the civil, indeed for
many purposes it was desirable to graduate in both these subjects
as a _Doctor utriusque juris_, or as we say a J.U.D. or an LL. D.
Canon law was condemned by the theologians as a “lucrative” subject,
which drew students away from pure learning toward the path of
ecclesiastical preferment. By the thirteenth century the mediaeval
church was a vast administrative machine which needed lawyers to run
it, and a well-trained canonist had a good chance of rising to the
highest dignities.[6] No wonder canon law attracted the ambitious,
the wealthy, even the idle, for at Paris we are told that the lazy
students frequented the lectures of the canonists in the middle of the
morning, rather than the other courses which began at six. The standard
textbook in canon law was the _Decretum_ of Gratian, supplemented by
the decretals of subsequent popes, especially the great collection
which Gregory IX in 1234 distributed to the principal universities.
The methods of studying these texts were the same as in the civil law,
giving rise to the rich canonistic literature of the later Middle Ages
and the marginal glosses for which, according to Dante, “the Gospel and
the great doctors are deserted.”
Of the textbooks needed in all these subjects the university undertook
to secure a supply at once sufficient, correct, and cheap, for the
regulation of the book trade was one of the earliest and most valued
of university privileges. As books were costly they were commonly
rented, at a fixed price per quire, rather than owned; indeed the
sale of books was hedged in by close restrictions designed to curb
monopoly prices and to prevent their removal from town. The earliest
Paris tariff, ca. 1286, lists for rent copies of one hundred and
thirty-eight different books. In course of time many students came to
have books of their own--a Bible, or at least some part of it, a piece
of the _Digest_, perhaps even the “twenty bokes clad in blak or reed”
of Chaucer’s Oxford clerk. Whether rented or owned, the supply was not
inconsiderable; on the Bolognese monuments each student has a book
before him. So long as each copy had to be made by hand, accuracy was a
matter of much importance, and the university had its supervisors and
correctors who inspected periodically all the books for sale in the
town. Moreover, at Bologna a constant supply of new books was secured
by the requirement that every professor should turn over a copy of
his repetitions and disputations to the stationers for publication.
The principal books of law and theology were the natural outgrowth of
university lectures. With demand and supply so largely concentrated in
the universities, it is not surprising that these should have become
the chief centres of the book trade and, as we should say, of the
publishing business. So long as students could rent the books they
required, there was less need for libraries than we might at first
suppose, and it was quite natural that for long the university as
such should have no library. In course of time, however, books were
given for the use of students, chiefly in the form of bequests to
the colleges, where they could be borrowed or consulted on the spot.
By 1338 the oldest extant catalogue of the Sorbonne, the chief Paris
library, lists 1722 volumes, many of them still to be seen in the
Bibliothèque Nationale, while many an Oxford college still preserves
codices which belonged to its library in the Middle Ages.
Turning from books to professors, we should note at the outset that
the Middle Ages produced many excellent and renowned teachers. The
mechanism of learning was still comparatively simple, its content not
yet overwhelming, and, in spite of the close adherence to texts, there
was a large scope for the personality of the instructor. Thus, long
before the days of universities, Alcuin was the moving spirit in the
revival of education at the court of Charlemagne and the monastery
school of Tours, and two centuries later Gerbert of Rheims roused the
wonder of contemporaries by his skilful use of the classics in the
study of rhetoric and by devices for the teaching of astronomy so
ingenious that they seemed in some way “divine.”[7] From the period
of university origins we get a fairly clear impression of Abelard
as a teacher and ‘class-room entertainer,’ bold, original, lucid,
sharply polemical, always fresh and stimulating, and withal “able to
move to laughter the minds of serious men.” His procedure as exhibited
in his _Sic et non_ was to marshal authorities and arguments for and
against specific propositions, a method which was soon imitated in
Gratian’s _Concord of Discordant Canons_, and, reënforced by the _New
Logic_ of Aristotle, was to culminate in the scholastic method of St.
Thomas Aquinas and stamp itself upon the thought of many generations.
Sharpening to the wits as this method was in the hands of Abelard and
his successors, the very antagonism of yes or no as he formulated it
left no room for intermediate positions, for those _nuances_ of thought
in which, as Renan pointed out, truth is usually to be found.
For a contemporary impression of the teachers of the twelfth century,
nothing is so good as the oft-quoted passages in which John of
Salisbury describes his _Wanderjahre_ in France from 1136 to 1147,
chiefly at Paris and Chartres.[8] Learning the rudiments of dialectic
from Abelard, he continued under two other teachers of this art, one
over-scrupulous in detail, perspicuous, brief, and to the point, the
other subtle and profuse, showing that simple answers could not be
given. “Afterward one of them went to Bologna and unlearned what he had
taught, so that on his return he also untaught it.” John then passed
on to Chartres to study grammar under William of Conches and Bernard.
The humane yet thorough teaching of literature here excited his warm
admiration--close study, memorizing choice extracts, grammar taught
by composition, imitation of excellent models but merciless exposure
of borrowed finery, qualities which made Bernard “the most copious
source of letters in Gaul in modern times.” Returning to Paris after
twelve years’ absence, John found his old companions “as before, and
where they were before; nor did they appear to have reached the goal
in unravelling the old questions, nor had they added one jot of a
proposition. The aims that once inspired them, inspired them still:
they had progressed in one point only: they had unlearned moderation,
they knew not modesty; in such wise that one might despair of their
recovery. And thus experience taught me a manifest conclusion, that,
whereas dialectic furthers other studies, so if it remain by itself it
lies bloodless and barren, nor does it quicken the soul to yield fruit
of philosophy, except the same conceive from elsewhere.”
The teachers of the thirteenth century who talk most about themselves
are the professors of grammar and rhetoric like Buoncompagno at
Bologna, John of Garlande at Paris, Ponce of Provence at Orleans, and
Lorenzo of Aquileia at Naples and almost everywhere, but we shall
make sufficient acquaintance with their inflated writings in other
connections. More significant is the account which Odofredus gives of
his lectures on the _Old Digest_ at Bologna:
“Concerning the method of teaching the following order was kept by
ancient and modern doctors and especially by my own master, which
method I shall observe: First, I shall give you summaries of each title
before I proceed to the text; second, I shall give you as clear and
explicit a statement as I can of the purport of each law [included in
the title]; third, I shall read the text with a view to correcting it;
fourth, I shall briefly repeat the contents of the law; fifth, I shall
solve apparent contradictions, adding any general principles of law
[to be extracted from the passage], commonly called ‘Brocardica,’ and
any distinctions or subtle and useful problems (_quaestiones_) arising
out of the law with their solutions, as far as the Divine Providence
shall enable me. And if any law shall seem deserving, by reason of
its celebrity or difficulty, of a repetition, I shall reserve it for
an evening repetition, for I shall dispute at least twice a year, once
before Christmas and once before Easter, if you like.
“I shall always begin the _Old Digest_ on or about the octave of
Michaelmas [6 October] and finish it entirely, by God’s help, with
everything ordinary and extraordinary, about the middle of August. The
_Code_ I shall always begin about a fortnight after Michaelmas and by
God’s help complete it, with everything ordinary and extraordinary,
about the first of August. Formerly the doctors did not lecture on the
extraordinary portions; but with me all students can have profit, even
the ignorant and the new-comers, for they will hear the whole book, nor
will anything be omitted as was once the common practice here. For the
ignorant can profit by the statement of the case and the exposition of
the text, the more advanced can become more adept in the subtleties
of questions and opposing opinions. And I shall read all the glosses,
which was not the practice before my time.” Then comes certain general
advice as to the choice of teachers and the methods of study, followed
by some general account of the _Digest_.
This course closed as follows: “Now gentlemen, we have begun and
finished and gone through this book as you know who have been in the
class, for which we thank God and His Virgin Mother and all His saints.
It is an ancient custom in this city that when a book is finished
mass should be sung to the Holy Ghost, and it is a good custom and
hence should be observed. But since it is the practice that doctors on
finishing a book should say something of their plans, I will tell you
something but not much. Next year I expect to give ordinary lectures
well and lawfully as I always have, but no extraordinary lectures,
for students are not good payers, wishing to learn but not to pay, as
the saying is: All desire to know but none to pay the price. I have
nothing more to say to you beyond dismissing you with God’s blessing
and begging you to attend the mass.”[9]
Important as was the formal lecture in those days of few books and no
laboratories, it was by no means the sole vehicle of instruction. A
comprehensive survey of university teaching would need also to take
account of the less formal ‘cursory’ or ‘extraordinary’ lectures,
many of them given by mere bachelors; the reviews and ‘repetitions,’
which were often given in hospices or colleges in the evenings; and
the disputations which prepared for the final ordeal of maintaining
publicly the graduation thesis.
The class-rooms in which these lectures were given have long since
disappeared. If the master’s house had no suitable room, he literally
hired a hall in some convenient neighborhood. At Paris such halls
were mostly in a single street on the Left Bank, the Vicus Stramineus
or Rue du Fouarre celebrated by Dante, apparently so-called from the
straw-covered floor on which the students sat as they took notes. At
Bologna the class-rooms were rather more ambitious. Here Buoncompagno,
writing in 1235, has described an ideal lecture hall, quiet and clean,
with a fair prospect from its windows, its walls painted green but
with no pictures or statues to distract attention, the lecturer’s
seat elevated so that he may see and be seen by all, the seats of the
students permanently assigned by nations and according to individual
rank and fame; but he adds significantly, “I never had such a house
myself and do not believe any of this sort was ever built.” Our
knowledge of the realities of the Bolognese class-room is derived
chiefly from the monuments and miniatures of the professors of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in which the master is regularly
seated at a desk under a canopy on a raised platform, while the
students have flat or inclined desks on which their books lie open. The
professors, in medicine as in law, regularly have an open volume before
them.
The nature of the final examination is best illustrated at Paris,
where it is described in the _De conscientia_ of that genial moralist,
Robert de Sorbon, founder of the Sorbonne, by means of a suggestive
parallel with the Last Judgment. Taking as his text Job’s desire that
his “adversary had written a book,” and outlining his headings in the
approved fashion of his time, Robert begins with the statement that
if any one decides to seek the _licentia legendi_ at Paris and cannot
be excused from examination--as many of the great, by special favor,
are--he would much like to be told by the chancellor, or by some one
in his confidence, on what book he would be examined. Just as he would
be a crazy student indeed, who, having found out which book this was,
should neglect it and spend his time on others, even so is he mad who
fails to study the book of his own conscience, in which we shall all,
without exception, be examined at the great day. Moreover, if any one
is rejected by the chancellor, he may be reëxamined after a year, or
it may be that, through the intercession of friends or by suitable
gifts or services to the chancellor’s relatives or other examiners,
the chancellor can be induced to change his decision; whereas at the
Last Judgment the sentence will be final and there will be no help
from wealth or influence or stout assertion of ability as canonist or
civilian or of familiarity with all arguments and all fallacies. Then,
if one fails before the chancellor of Paris, the fact is known to but
five or six and the mortification passes away in time, while the Great
Chancellor, God, will refute the sinner ‘in full university’ before
the whole world. The chancellor, too, does not flog the candidate,
but in the Last Judgment the guilty will be beaten with a rod of iron
from the valley of Jehosaphat through the length of hell, nor can we
reckon, like idle boys in the grammar-schools, on escaping Saturday’s
punishment by feigning illness, playing truant, or being stronger
than the master, or like them solace ourselves with the thought
that after all our fun is well worth a whipping. The chancellor’s
examination, too, is voluntary; he does not force any one to seek the
degree, but waits as long as the scholars wish, and is even burdened
with their insistent demands for examinations. In studying the book
of our conscience we should imitate the candidates for the license,
who eat and drink sparingly, conning steadily the one book they are
preparing, searching out all the authorities that pertain to this,
and hearing only the professors that lecture on this subject, so that
they have difficulty in concealing from their fellows the fact that
they are preparing for examination. Such preparation is not the work
of five or ten days--though there are many who will not meditate a day
or an hour on their sins--but of many years. At the examination the
chancellor asks, “Brother, what do you say to this question, what do
you say to this one and this one?” The chancellor is not satisfied with
a verbal knowledge of books without an understanding of their sense,
but unlike the Great Judge, who will hear the book of our conscience
from beginning to end and suffer no mistakes, he requires only seven
or eight passages in a book and passes the candidate if he answers
three questions out of four. Still another difference lies in the
fact that the chancellor does not always conduct the examination in
person, so that the student who would be terrified in the presence of
so much learning often answers well before the masters who act in the
chancellor’s place. Nothing is here said of the public maintenance of
a thesis against all comers, an important final exercise which still
survives as a form in German universities.
At Bologna there was first a “rigorous and tremendous examination”
before doctors, each sworn to treat the candidate “as he would his own
son.” Then followed a public examination and inception which a letter
home described as follows: “‘Sing unto the Lord a new song, praise him
with stringed instruments and organs, rejoice upon the high-sounding
cymbals,’ for your son has held a glorious disputation, which was
attended by a great multitude of teachers and scholars. He answered
all questions without a mistake, and no one could prevail against his
arguments. Moreover he celebrated a famous banquet, at which both rich
and poor were honored as never before, and he has duly begun to give
lectures which are already so popular that others’ class-rooms are
deserted and his own are filled.” The same rhetorician also tells of an
unsuccessful candidate who could do nothing in the disputation but sat
in his chair like a goat while the spectators in derision called him
rabbi; his guests at the banquet had such eating that they had no will
to drink, and he must needs hire students to attend his classes.
The social position of mediaeval professors must be seen against the
background of the social system of a different age from ours. We come
perhaps nearest to modern conditions in the cities of Italy, where
there is evidence in the Middle Ages as now of the distinguished
position of many professors of medicine and civil law. Many theologians
and teachers of canon law reached high places in the church such as
bishoprics and cardinalates. Among the theologians and philosophers
those of highest distinction were regularly university professors:
Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Bonaventura, all the great array
of doctors angelic, invincible, irrefragable, seraphic, subtle, and
universal. That these were also Dominicans or Franciscans withdrew them
only partially from the world.
If, as some reformers maintain, the social position and self-respect
of professors involve their management of university affairs, the
Middle Ages were the great age of professorial control. The university
itself was a society of masters when it was not a society of students.
As there were no endowments of importance there were no boards of
trustees, nor was there any such system of state control as exists on
the Continent or in many parts of the United States. Administration in
the modern sense was strikingly absent, but much time was consumed in
various sorts of university meetings. In a quite remarkable degree the
university was self-governing as well as self-respecting, escaping some
of the abuses of a system which occasionally allows trustees or regents
to speak of professors as their “hired men.” Whether the individual
professor was freer under such a system is another question, for the
corporation of masters was apt to exercise a pretty close control over
action if not over opinion, and the tyranny of colleagues is a form of
that “tyranny of one’s next-door neighbor” from which the world seems
unable to escape.
There remains the question of the professor’s intellectual liberty,
the right to teach truth as he sees it, which we have come to call
academic freedom. It is plain that much depends here, as with Pilate,
on our conception of truth. If it is something to be discovered by
search, the search must be free and untrammelled. If, however, truth
is something which has already been revealed to us by authority, then
it has only to be expounded, and the expositor must be faithful to the
authoritative doctrine. Needless to say, the latter was the mediaeval
conception of truth and its teaching. “Faith,” it was held, “precedes
science, fixes its boundaries, and prescribes its conditions.”[10] “I
believe in order that I may know, I do not know in order to believe,”
said Anselm. If reason has its bounds thus set, it befits reason to be
humble. Let not the masters and students of Paris, says Gregory IX,
“show themselves philosophers, but let them strive to become God’s
learned.” The dangers of intellectual pride and reliance upon reason
alone are illustrated by many characteristic stories of masters struck
dumb in the midst of their boasting, like Étienne de Tournay, who,
having proved the doctrine of the Trinity “so lucidly, so elegantly, so
catholically,” asserted that he could just as easily demolish his own
proof. Mediaeval orthodoxy looked askance at mere cleverness, partly
because much of the discussion of the schools led nowhere, partly
because a mind that played too freely about a proposition might easily
fall into heresy. And for the detection and punishment of heresy the
mediaeval church organized a special system of courts known as the
Inquisition.
Such being the general conditions, what was the actual situation? In
practice freedom was general, save in philosophy and theology. In
law, in medicine, in grammar and mathematics, men were normally free
to lecture and dispute as they would. As there was no social problem
in the modern sense and no teaching of the social sciences as such,
a fruitful source of difficulty was absent. So far as I know, no
mediaeval professor was condemned for preaching free trade or free
silver or socialism or non-resistance. Moreover, while individual
treatises might be publicly burnt, as in the later Roman Empire, there
was no organized censorship of books before the sixteenth century.
Now as to philosophy and theology. The trouble lies of course with
theology, for philosophy was free save when it touched theological
questions. But then, philosophy is very apt to touch theological
questions, and all through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
there was an intermittent fight between Christian theology and pagan
philosophy as represented by the works of Aristotle. It began with
Abelard when he tried to apply his logical method of inquiry to
theology, and it went on when his contemporary, Gilbert de la Porrée,
directed still more of the Aristotelian logic toward theological
speculation. By the end of the twelfth century, the _New Logic_ was
pretty well assimilated, but then came Aristotle’s _Metaphysics_ and
natural philosophy, with their Arabic commentators, the study of which
at Paris was formally forbidden in 1210 and 1215. In 1231 the Pope
requires them to be “examined and purged of all suspicion of error,”
but by 1254 they are a fixed part of the curriculum in arts, not
expurgated but reconciled by interpretation to the Christian faith. A
generation later there is a recrudescence of Averroism, emphasizing the
doctrine of the eternity of matter and the determination of earthly
acts by the heavenly bodies; and two hundred and nineteen errors of
this party were condemned in 1277 by the bishop of Paris, who took
occasion to lament incursions into theology on the part of students
of arts. Throughout this period the whole of Aristotle was taught and
studied at Paris, and his method was used by Thomas Aquinas to rear his
vast structure of scholastic theology. Others reserved for themselves
a wide range of philosophic speculation, and in case of trouble they
could save themselves by falling back on the doctrine that what was
true in philosophy might be false in theology, and _vice versa_.