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LIFE IN THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

"A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also,
That unto logik hadde longe y-go
As lene was his hors as is a rake,
And he was not right fat, I undertake;
But loked holwe, and therto soberly,
Ful thredbar was his overest courtepy,
For he had geten him yet no benefyce,
Ne was so worldly for to have offyce.
For him was lever have at his beddes heed
Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophye,
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrye.
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;
But al that he might of his freendes hente,
On bokes and on lerninge he it spente,
And bisily gan for the soules preye
Of hem that yaf him wherwith to scoleye,
Of studie took he most cure and most hede,
Noght o word spak he more than was nede,
And that was seyd in forme and reverence
And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.
Souninge in moral vertu was his speche.
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche."

An account of life in the medieval University might well take the form of a commentary upon the classical description of a medieval English student. His dress, the character of his studies and the nature of his materials, the hardships and the natural ambitions of his scholar's life, his obligations to founders and benefactors, suggest learned expositions which might

in judicious hands
Extend from here to Mesopotamy,

and will serve for a modest attempt to picture the environment of one of the Canterbury pilgrims.

Chaucer's famous lines do more than afford opportunities of explanation and comment; they give us an indication of the place assigned to universities and their students by English public opinion in the later Middle Ages. The monk of the "Prologue" is simply a country gentleman. No accusation of immorality is brought against him, but he is a jovial huntsman who likes the sound of the bridle jingling in the wind better than the call of the church bells, a lover of dogs and horses, of rich clothes and great feasts. The portrait of the friar is still less sympathetic; he is a frequenter of taverns, a devourer of widows' houses, a man of gross, perhaps of evil, life. The monk abandons his cloister and its rules, the friar despises the poor and the leper. The poet is making no socialistic attack upon the foundations of society, and no heretical onslaught upon the Church; he draws a portrait of two types of the English regular clergy. His description of two types of the English secular clergy forms an illuminating contrast. The noble verses, in which he tells of the virtues of the parish priest, certainly imply that the seculars also had their temptations and that they did not always resist them; but the fact remains that Chaucer chose as the representative of the parochial clergy one who

"wayted after no pompe and reverence,
Ne maked him a spyced conscience,
But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,
He taughte, but first he folwed it himselve."

The history of pious and charitable foundations is a vindication of the truth of the portraiture of the "Prologue." The foundation of a new monastery and the endowment of the friars had alike ceased to attract the benevolent donor, who was turning his attention to the universities, where secular clergy were numerous. The clerks of Oxford and Cambridge had succeeded to the place held 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 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 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 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