Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/323

 to their proper study, pro utilitabe ecclesiastici regiminis. At Oriel five or six fellows, with consent of the seniors, might read the canon law, and by dispensation of the provost, the civil law also. At Exeter, one of Stapledon's fellows was to study Scripture or the Canon Law. We learn from Mr. Mullinger's invaluable book on Cambridge, that at Gonville Hall, founded about seventy years after Merton, each fellow was allowed to study canon law for two years. It might be possible to trace in the successive foundations vestiges of the old subsisting and often revived jealousy of the studies; for Merton was founded at a time when, as Roger Bacon tells us, the civil law was looked on with jealousy as a mere professional or money-making study, whilst before the foundation of Gonville Hall the conflict between John XXII and Lewis of Bavaria had made the political tendencies of these studies more important and obvious. At Trinity Hall, which was nearly of the same date as Gonville, ten civilians and seven canonists were seventeen out of the twenty statutory fellows. At New College, out of seventy there were to be ten civilians and ten canonists, but these were reduced by Waynflete to two civilians and four canonists. At All Souls, sixteen out of forty were to be lawyers; at King's College, Cambridge, out of seventy, two civilians and four canonists; while at Catharine Hall both the canon and civil law were excluded. These variations depend no doubt on the special intentions of the founders to promote scientific study, or to insure the worldly advancement of their pupils, and, to some extent, on the varying relations between theology and law of which I must speak in the next lecture. It is however clear, at the lowest estimate, that abundant encouragement and opportunities for the study could be found in both the seats of learning. Closely allied as the canon and civil laws were, they composed two faculties; with regular schemes of lectures, fees, and exercises; the doctor of the civil law had to prove his knowledge of the Digest and the Institutes; the doctor of the canon law must have worked three years at the Digest and three at the Decretals, and studied theology also for two years. It is, you observe, not the national church law, but the universal or