The History Of Education by Ellwood P. Cubberley (epub e reader .txt) 📖

THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES

EVOLUTION OF THE STUDIUM GENERALE. In the preceding chapter we described briefly the new movement toward association which characterized the eleventh and the twelfth centuries—the municipal movement, the merchant guilds, the trade guilds, etc. These were doing for civil life what monasticism had earlier done for the religious life. They were collections of like-minded men, who united themselves into associations or guilds for mutual benefit, protection, advancement, and self-government within the limits of their city, business, trade, or occupation. This tendency toward association, in the days when state government was weak or in its infancy, was one of the marked features of the transition time from the early period of the Middle Ages, when the Church was virtually the State, to the later period of the Middle Ages, when the authority of the Church in secular matters was beginning to weaken, modern nations were beginning to form, and an interest in worldly affairs was beginning to replace the previous inordinate interest in the world to come.

We also noted in the preceding chapters that certain cathedral and monastery schools, but especially the cathedral schools, [1] stimulated by the new interest in Dialectic, were developing into much more than local teaching institutions designed to afford a supply of priests of some little education for the parishes of the bishopric. Once York and later Canterbury, in England, had had teachers who attracted students from other bishoprics. Paris had for long been a famous center for the study of the Liberal Arts and of Theology. Saint Gall had become noted for its music.

Theologians coming from Paris (1167-68) had given a new impetus to study among the monks at Oxford. A series of political events in northern Italy had given emphasis to the study of law in many cities, and the Moslems in Spain had stimulated the schools there and in southern France to a study of medicine and Aristotelian science. Rome was for long a noted center for study. Gradually these places came to be known as studia publica, or studia generalia, meaning by this a generally recognized place of study, where lectures were open to any one, to students of all countries and of all conditions. [2] Traveling students came to these places from afar to hear some noted teacher read and comment on the famous textbooks of the time.

From the first both teachers and students had been considered as members of the clergy, and hence had enjoyed the privileges and immunities extended to that class, but, now that the students were becoming so numerous and were traveling so far, some additional grant of protection was felt to be desirable. Accordingly the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, [3] in 1158, issued a general proclamation of privileges and protection (R. 101). In this he ordered that teachers and students traveling “to the places in which the studies are carried on” should be protected from unjust arrest, should be permitted to “dwell in security,” and in case of suit should be tried “before their professors or the bishop of the city.”

This document marks the beginning of a long series of rights and privileges granted to the teachers and students of the universities now in process of evolution in western Europe.

THE UNIVERSITY EVOLUTION. The development of a university out of a cathedral or some other form of school represented, in the Middle Ages, a long local evolution. Universities were not founded then as they are today. A teacher of some reputation drew around him a constantly increasing body of students. Other teachers of ability, finding a student body already there, also “set up their chairs” and began to teach. Other teachers and more students came. In this way a studium was created.

About these teachers in time collected other university servants—

“bedells, librarians, lower officials, preparers of parchment, scribes, illuminators of parchment, and others who serve it,” as Count Rupert enumerated them in the Charter of Foundation granted, in 1386, to Heidelberg (R. 103). At Salerno, as we have already seen (p. 199), medical instruction arose around the work of Constantine of Carthage and the medicinal springs found in the vicinity. Students journeyed there from many lands, and licenses to practice the medical art were granted there as early as 1137. At Bologna, we have also seen (p. 195), the work of Irnerius and Gratian early made this a great center for the study of civil and canon law, and their pupils spread the taste for these new subjects throughout Europe. Paris for two centuries had been a center for the study of the Arts and of Theology, and a succession of famous teachers—William of Champeaux, Abelard, Peter the Lombard—had taught there. So important was the theological teaching there that Paris has been termed “the Sinai of instruction” of the Middle Ages.

By the beginning of the thirteenth century both students and teachers had become so numerous, at a number of places in western Europe, that they began to adopt the favorite mediaeval practice and organized themselves into associations, or guilds, for further protection from extortion and oppression and for greater freedom from regulation by the Church. They now sought and obtained additional privileges for themselves, and, in particular, the great mediaeval document—a charter of rights and privileges. [4] As both teachers and students were for long regarded as clerici the charters were usually sought from the Pope, but in some cases they were obtained from the king. [5] These associations of scholars, or teachers, or both, “born of the need of companionship which men who cultivate their intelligence feel,” sought to perform the same functions for those who studied and taught that the merchant and craft guilds were performing for their members. The ruling idea was association for protection, and to secure freedom for discussion and study; the obtaining of corporate rights and responsibilities; and the organization of a system of apprenticeship, based on study and developing through journeyman into mastership, [6] as attested by an examination and the license to teach. In the rise of these teacher and student guilds [7] we have the beginnings of the universities of western Europe, and their organization into chartered teaching groups (R. 100) was simply another phase of that great movement toward the association of like-minded men for worldly purposes which began to sweep over the rising cities in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. [8]

The term universitas, or university, which came in time to be applied to these associations of masters and apprentices in study, was a general Roman legal term, practically equivalent to our modern word corporation.

At first it was applied to any association, and when used with reference to teachers and scholars was so stated. Thus, in addressing the masters and students at Paris, Pope Innocent, in 1205, writes: “Universis magistris et scholaribus Parisiensibus“, that is, “to the corporation of masters and scholars at Paris.” Later the term university became restricted to the meaning which we give it to-day.

The university mothers. Though this movement for association and the development of advanced study had manifested itself in a number of places by the close of the twelfth century, two places in particular led all the others and became types which were followed in charters and in new creations. These were Bologna and Paris. [9] After one or the other of these two nearly all the universities of western Europe were modeled.

Bologna or Paris, or one of their immediate children, served as a pattern.

Thus Bologna was the university mother for almost all the Italian universities; for Montpellier and Grenoble in southern France; for some of the Spanish universities; and for Glasgow, Upsala, Cracow, and for the Law Faculty at Oxford. Paris was the university mother for Oxford, and through her Cambridge; for most of the northern French universities; for the university of Toulouse, which in turn became the mother for other southern French and northern Spanish universities; for Lisbon and Coimbra in Portugal; for the early German universities at Prague, Vienna, Cologne, and Heidelberg; and through Cologne for Copenhagen. Through one of the colleges at Cambridge—Emmanuel—she became, indirectly, the mother of a new Cambridge in America—Harvard—founded in 1636. Figure 61 shows the location of the chief universities founded before 1600. Viewed from the standpoint of instruction, Paris was followed almost entirely in Theology, and Bologna in Law, while the three centers which most influenced the development of instruction in medicine were Salerno, Montpellier, and Salamanca.

[Illustration: FIG. 61. SHOWING LOCATION OF THE CHIEF UNIVERSITIES FOUNDED

BEFORE 1600]

While the earlier universities gradually arose as the result of a long local evolution, it in time became common for others to be founded by a migration of professors from an older university to some cathedral city having a developing studium. In the days when a university consisted chiefly of master and students, when lectures could be held in any kind of a building or collection of buildings, and when there were no libraries, laboratories, campus, or other university property to tie down an institution, it was easy to migrate. Thus, in 1209, the school at Cambridge was created a university by a secession of masters from Oxford, much as bees swarm from a hive. Sienna, Padua, Reggio, Vicenza, Arezzo resulted from “swarmings” from Bologna; and Vercelli from Vicenza. In 1228, after a student riot at Paris which provoked reprisals