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

from the city, many of the masters and students went to the studium towns of Angers, Orleans, and Rheims, and universities were established at the first two. Migrations from Prague helped establish many of the German universities. In this way the university organization was spread over Europe. In 1200 there were but six studia generalia which can be considered as having evolved into universities—Salerno, Bologna, and Reggio, in Italy; Paris and Montpellier, in France; and Oxford, in England. By 1300 eight more had evolved in Italy, three more in France, Cambridge in England, and five in Spain and Portugal. By 1400 twenty-two additional universities had developed, five of which were in German lands, and by 1500 thirty-five more had been founded, making a total of eighty.

By 1600 the total had been raised to one hundred and eight (R. 100, for list by countries, dates, and method of founding). Some of these (approximately thirty) afterwards died, while in the following centuries additional ones were created. [10]

 

PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES GRANTED. The grant of privileges to physicians and teachers made by the Emperor Constantine, in 333 A.D. (R. 26), and the privileges and immunities granted to the clergy (clerici) by the early Christian Roman Emperors (R. 38), doubtless formed a basis for the many grants of special privileges made to the professors and students in the early universities. The document promulgated by Frederick Barbarossa, in 1158 (R. 101), began the granting of privileges to the studia generalia, and this was followed by numerous other grants. The grant to students of freedom from trial by the city authorities, and the obligation of every citizen of Paris to seize any one seen striking a student, granted by Philip Augustus, in 1200 (R. 102), is another example, widely followed, of the bestowal of large privileges. Count Rupert I, in founding the University of Heidelberg, in 1386, granted many privileges, exempted the students from “any duty, levy, imposts, tolls, excises, or other exactions whatever” while coming to, studying at, or returning home from the university (R. 103). The exemption from taxation (R. 104) became a matter of form, and was afterwards followed in the chartering of American colleges (R. 187). Exemption from military service also was granted.

 

So valuable an asset was a university to a city, and so easy was it for a university to move almost overnight, that cities often, and at times even nations, encouraged not only the founding of universities, but also the migration of both faculties and students. An interesting case of a city bidding for the presence of a university is that of Vercelli (R. 105), which made a binding agreement, as a part of the city charter, whereby the city agreed with a body of masters and students “swarming” from Padua to loan the students money at lower than the regular rates, to see that there was plenty of food in the markets at no increase in prices, and to protect the students from injustice. An instance of bidding by a State is the case of Cambridge, which obtained quite an addition by the coming of striking Paris masters and students in 1229, in response to the pledge of King Henry III (R. 109), who “humbly sympathized with them for their sufferings at Paris,” and promised them that if they would come “to our kingdom of England and remain there to study” he would assign to them “cities, boroughs, towns, whatsoever you may wish to select, and in every fitting way will cause you to rejoice in a state of liberty and tranquillity.”

 

One of the most important privileges which the universities early obtained, and a rather singular one at that, was the right of cessatio, which meant the right to stop lectures and go on a strike as a means of enforcing a redress of grievances against either town or church authority (R. 107). This right was for long jealously guarded by the university, and frequently used to defend itself from the smallest encroachments on its freedom to teach, study, and discipline the members of its guild as it saw fit, and often the right not to discipline them at all. Often the cessatio was invoked on very trivial grounds, as in the case of the Oxford cessatio of 1209 (R. 108), the Paris cessatio of 1229 (R. 109), and the numerous other cessationes which for two centuries [11]

repeatedly disturbed the continuity of instruction at Paris.

 

DEGREES IN THE GUILD. The most important of the university rights, however, was the right to examine and license its own teachers (R. 110), and to grant the license to teach (Rs. 111, 112). Founded as the universities were after the guild model, they were primarily places for the taking of apprentices in the Arts, developing them into journeymen and masters, and certifying to their proficiency in the teaching craft. [12]

Their purpose at first was to prepare teachers, and the giving of instruction to students for cultural ends, or a professional training for practical use aside from teaching the subject, was a later development.

 

Accordingly it came about in time that, after a number of years of study in the Arts under some master, a student was permitted to present himself for a test as to his ability to define words, determine the meaning of phrases, and read the ordinary Latin texts in Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic (the Trivium), to the satisfaction of other masters than his own. In England this test came to be known by the term determine. Its passage was equivalent to advancing from apprenticeship to the ranks of a journeyman, and the successful candidate might now be permitted to assist the master, or even give some elementary instruction himself while continuing his studies. He now became an assistant or companion, and by the fourteenth century was known as a baccalaureus, a term used in the Church, in chivalry, and in the guilds, and which meant a beginner.

There was at first, though, no thought of establishing an examination and a new degree for the completion of this first step in studies. The bachelor’s degree was a later development, sought at first by those not intending to teach, and eventually erected into a separate degree.

 

When the student had finally heard a sufficient number of courses, as required by the statutes of his guild, he might present himself for examination for the teaching license. This was a public trial, and took the form of a public disputation on some stated thesis, in the presence of the masters, and against all comers. It was the student’s “masterpiece,”

analogous to the masterpiece of any other guild, and he submitted it to a jury of the masters of his craft. [13] Upon his masterpiece being adjudged satisfactory, he also became a master in his craft, was now able to define and dispute, was formally admitted to the highest rank in the teaching guild, might have a seal, and was variously known as master, doctor, or professor, all of which were once synonymous terms. [14] If he wished to prepare himself for teaching one of the professional subjects he studied still further, usually for a number of years, in one of the professional faculties, and in time he was declared to be a Doctor of Law, or Medicine, or of Theology.

 

[Illustration: FIG 62. SEAL OF A DOCTOR, UNIVERSITY OF PARIS]

 

THE TEACHING FACULTIES. The students for a long time grouped themselves for better protection (and aggression) according to the nation from which they came, [15] and each “nation” elected a councilor to look after the interests of its members. Between the different nations there were constant quarrels, insults were passed back and forth, and much bad blood engendered. [16] On the side of the masters the organization was by teaching subjects, and into what came to be known as faculties. [17]

Thus there came to be four faculties in a fully organized mediaeval university, representing the four great divisions of knowledge which had been evolved—Arts, Law, Medicine, and Theology. Each faculty elected a dean, and the deans and councilors elected a rector, who was the head or president of the university. The chancellor, the successor of the cathedral school scholasticus, was usually appointed by the Pope and represented the Church, and a long struggle ensued between the rector and the chancellor to see who should be the chief authority in the university.

The rector was ultimately victorious, and the position of chancellor became largely an honorary position of no real importance.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 63. NEW COLLEGE, AT OXFORD

One of the oldest of the Oxford colleges, having been founded in 1379. The picture shows the chapel, cloisters (consecrated in 1400), and a tall tower, once forming a part of the Oxford city walls. Note the similarity of this early college to a monastery, as in Plate 1.]

 

The Arts Faculty was the successor of the old cathedral-school instruction in the Seven Liberal Arts, and was found in practically all the universities. The Law Faculty embraced civil and canon law, as worked out at Bologna. The Medical Faculty taught the knowledge of the medical art, as worked out at Salerno and Montpellier. The Theological Faculty, the most important of the four, prepared learned men for the service of the Church, and was for some two centuries controlled by the scholastics. The Arts Faculty was preparatory to the other three. As Latin was the language of the classroom, and all the texts were Latin texts, a reading and speaking knowledge of Latin was necessary before coming to the university to study. This was obtained from a study of the first of the Seven Arts—

Grammar—in some monastery, cathedral, or other type of school. Thus a knowledge of Latin formed practically the sole requirement for admission to the mediaeval university, and continued to be the chief admission requirement in our universities up to the nineteenth century (R. 186 a).

In Europe it is still of great importance as a preparatory subject, but in South American countries it is not required at all.

 

Very few of the universities, in the beginning, had all four of these faculties. The very nature of the evolution of the earlier ones precluded this. Thus Bologna had developed into a studium generale from its prominence in law, and was virtually constituted a university in 1158, but it did not add Medicine until 1316, or Theology until 1360. Paris began sometime before 1200 as an arts school, Theology with some instruction in Canon Law was added by 1208, a Law Faculty in 1271, and a Medical Faculty in 1274. Montpellier began as a medical school sometime in the twelfth century. Law followed a little later, a teacher from Bologna “setting up his chair” there. Arts was organized by 1242. A sort of theological school began in 1263, but it was not chartered as a faculty until 1421. So it was with many of the early universities. These four traditional faculties were well established by the fourteenth century, and continued as the typical form of university organization until modern times. With the great university development and the great multiplication of subjects of study which characterized the nineteenth century, many new faculties and schools and colleges have had to be created, particularly in the United States, in response to new modern demands. [18]

 

NATURE OF THE INSTRUCTION. The teaching material in each faculty was much as we have already indicated. After the recovery of the works of Aristotle he came to dominate the instruction in the Faculty of Arts. [19] The Statutes of Paris, in 1254, giving the books to be read for the A.B. and the A.M. degrees (R. 113), show how fully Aristotle had been adopted there as the basis for instruction in Logic, Ethics, and Natural Philosophy