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 UNIVERSITIES

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UNIVERSITIES

had been exercised by the chancellor, as the pope's representative; and though this authority, by reason of conflicts with the university, had been somewhat reduced diu-ing the thirteenth centui-y, the chancellor was still sufficiently powerful to overshadow the rec- tor. Before the university came into existence, the chancellor had conferred the licence to teach, and this function he continued to perform all tlu-ough the process of organization and after the faculties with their various officials were fully established.

At Bologna, towards the close of the twelfth cen- tury, voluntary associations were estabhshed by the foreign, i. e. non-Bolognese, students for purposes of mutual support and protection. These students were not boys, but mature men; many of them were bene- ficed clergjTnen. In their organization they copied the guilds of travelling tradesmen; each association comprised a number of Nations, enacted its own statutes, and elected a rector who was assisted by a body of consiliarii. These student-guilds were known as universitates, i. e. corporations in the accepted legal sense, not teaching bodies. Originally four in number they were reduced by the middle of the thirteenth century to two: universilas ciiramonianorum and universilas ultraviontanorum. Neither the Bolognese students nor the doctors, being citizens of Bologna, belonged to a "university". The doctors were employed, under contract, and paid by the scholars, and were subject, in many respects, to the statutes framed by the student -bodies. In spite of this depen- dence, however, the professors retained control of strictly academic affairs; they were the rectores scho- larum, while the heads of the universities were rectores scholarium; in particular, the right of promotion, i. e. conferring degrees, was reserved to the doctors. These also formed associations, the collegia doctorum, which probably existed at or before the time of the founding of the student "universities". At first the doctors had full charge of examinations and in their own name granted the licence to teach. But in 1219 Honorius III gave the Archdeacon of Bologna exclusive authority to confer the doctorate, thus creating an office equivalent to that of the chancellor at Paris. The doctorate itself, as implying the right to member- ship in the collegium, was gradually restricted to the narrower circle of the doctores legentes, i. e. actually teaching. On the other hand, the student control was lessened by the fact that, in order to offset the in- ducements offered by rival towns, the city of Bologna, towards the end of the thirteenth century, began to pay the professors a regular salary in place of the fees formerly given, in such amount as they saw fit, by the scholars. As a result the appointment of the professors was taken over by the city, and eventually by the reformatores studii, a board established by the local authority. Meantime the two "universities" were being drawn together in one body and this was brought into closer relations with the college of doc- tors; so that Clement V (10 March, 1310) could speak of a magistrortmi et scholarium universilas at Bologna. At the beginning of the sixteenth century there was only one rector.

The growth of Oxford followed, in the main, that of Paris. In the middle of the twelfth century the schools were flourishing: Robert Pullen (q. v.), author of the "Sentences" on which the more famous work of Peter Lombard is largely based, and Vacarius, the eminent Lombard jurist, are mentioned as teachers. The number of students, already considerable, was swelled in 1167 by an exodus from Paris. There were two Nations: the Borcales (.\orthern) included the English and Scottish students; the Au.strales (South- ern), the Welsh and Irish. In 1274 these coalesced in one Nation, but the two proctors remained dis- tinct. In 1209, owing to difficulties with the town, 3000 scholars dispersed. On their return, the papal legate Nicholas issued (1214) an ordinance erijoining

that the town should pay an annual sum for the use of poor scholars and that "in case a clerk should be arrested by the townsmen, he should at once be sur- rendered on the demand of 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" (Munimenta, I, p. 2). The fu'St statutes were enacted in 1252, and confirmed by Innocent IV in 1254. The chancellor at first was an independent official appointed by the Bishop of Lincoln to act as ecclesiastical judge in scholastic matters. Gradually, however, he was absorbed into the university and became its head.

The development at Paris and Bologna explains the term by which the university was first designated, i. e. studium gencrale. This did not originally and essentially mean a school of universal learning, nor did it include all the four faculties: theology was often omitted or even excluded by the early charters. It first appears at Bologna in 1360, at Salamanca towards the end of the fourteenth century, at Montpellier in 1421: yet each of these schools was a studium yenerale in the original sense of the term, i. e. a school which admitted students from all parts, enjoyed special privileges, and conferred a right to teach that was acknowledged everywhere. This jus uhique docendi was implied in the very nature of the studium generate; it was first exphcitly conferred by Gregory IX in the Bull for Toulouse, 27 April, 1233, which declares that "any master examined there and approved in any faculty shall everywhere have the right to teach with- out further examination".

Universilas, as understood in the Middle Ages, was a legal term; it got its meaning from the Corpus juris civilis, and it denoted an association taken as a whole, i. e. in its corporate capacity. Employed with refer- ence to a school, xiniversitas did not mean a collection of all the sciences, but rather the entire group of persons engaged at a given institution in scientific pursuits i. e. the whole body of teachers and students: universilas magistrorum el scholariimi. This is the meaning of the term in official documents relating to Paris and Bologna; thus Alexander IV (10 Dec, 1255) states expressly that under the name university he understands "aU the masters and scholars residing at Paris, to whatever society or congregation they may belong." Gradually, however, the terms U7iifersitas and studium came to be used promiscuously to denote an institution of learning: Universilas Oxoniensis and Studium Oioniense were both apphed to Oxford. There is mention as early as 1279 of delicto in universi- tate Oxonice perpetrata (Munimenta, I, 39), and in the next century such phrases occur as (1306) in vni- versitnte cursus legere and (1311) in utuversitate Oxonice studere (ibid., 87 sqq.). That the terms had become practically sjTionymous at the beginning of the fourteenth centurv appears from a statement of Clement V, 13 July, 1312, to the effect that the Arch- bishop of Dubhn, John Lech, had reported that in those parts there was no scolarium universilas vel studium generale. About 1300 also the expression water universilas was used by the Oxford masters, and these may have taken it from a document of Innocent IV (6 Oct., 1254) in which the pope speaks of Oxford as fcecunda mater. Later the expression alma mater was apphed, e. g. to Paris in 13S9; Cologne, 1392; Oxford, 1411. Alma was probably suggested by the liturgical use, as e. g. in the hymn beginning "Alma redemptoris mater".

The earliest universities had no charters; they grew ex consiietudine. Out of these others quickly devel- oped, by migration, or by formal establishment. As the universities in the beginning possessed no buildings like our modern halls and laboratories, it was an easy matter for the students and professors, in case they became dis.satisfied in one place, to find accommoda- tions in another. Conflicts with the town often led