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 government and society. But, if we revert to the idea in which Universities had their origin, we find that the English University of the thirteenth century fulfilled the essence of it; it possessed the highest culture of the age; and it was recognised by the nation as the exponent of that culture.

This position rested primarily on the dominance of the scholastic philosophy, which, in turn, presupposed the unity of Christendom. It is no paradox to say that, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it was necessary for a University to be international before it could be worthily national. Its rank depended on the eminence of its teachers in studies which were acknowledged as paramount throughout Europe, and which were pursued in the common language of learning, the Latin. At Paris this cosmopolitan character appears in the four "nations" of that University, the French, the Norman, the Picard, and the English. At Oxford and Cambridge there were only two nations representing respectively the North and the South of England; but we hear of students from Paris migrating to both our Universities; and the number of foreign students, especially at Oxford, must at one time have been considerable.

With the second half of the fourteenth century, however, we enter upon a new period of our academic annals, in the course of which the attitude of the Universities towards the nation was gradually but profoundly changed. This stage may be roughly defined as extending from about 1350 to 1500.