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 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 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 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 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 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 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