Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/369

 Books and Science in the Middle Ages 271 "university." The king and the Pope both favored the university and granted the teachers and students many of the privileges of the clergy, a class to which they were regarded as belonging because learning had for so many centuries been confined to the clergy. About the time that we find the beginnings of a university or guild of professors at Paris, another great institution of learning was growing up at Bologna. Here the chief attention was given not to theology, as at Paris, but to the study .of the law, both Roman and church law (called the Canon Law, from the Greek word meaning "rule"). The University of Oxford was founded during the reign of Henry II, probably by English students and masters who had become discontented at Paris. The University of Cambridge, as well as numerous universities in France, Italy, and Spain, were founded in the thirteenth century. The German universities were established much later, most of them in the latter half of the fourteenth century and in the fifteenth. 447. The Academic Degree. When, after some years of study, a student was examined by the professors, he was, if successful, admitted to the corporation of teachers and became a master him- self. What we call a degree today was originally, in the medieval universities, nothing more than the right to teach ; but in the thir- teenth century many who did not care to become professors in our sense of the word began to desire the honorable title of master or doctor (which is only the Latin word for "teacher"). 448. Simple Methods of Instruction. There were no univer- sity buildings, and in Paris the lectures were given in the Latin Quarter. There were no laboratories, for there was no experi- mentation carried on in the universities. All that was required was a copy of the textbook. This the lecturer explained sentence by sentence, and the students listened and sometimes took notes. 449. Veneration for Aristotle. The most striking peculiarity of the instruction in the medieval university was the reverence paid to Aristotle ( 149). Most of the courses of lectures were devoted to the explanation of some one of his numerous treatises.