gave place to canons regular from St Victor; and henceforth Study of theology. the school on the former foundation was merely a school for the teaching of theology, and was attended only by the members of the house.[1] The schools out of which the university arose were those attached to the cathedral on the Île de la Cité, and presided over by the chancellor—a dignitary who must be carefully distinguished from the later chancellor of the university. For a long time the teachers lived in separate houses on the island, and it was only by degrees that they combined themselves into a society, and that special buildings were constructed for their class-work. But the flame which Abelard's teaching had kindled was not destined to expire. Among his pupils was Peter Lombard, who Lombard's “Sentences.” was bishop of Paris in 1159, and widely known to posterity as the compiler of the famous volume of the Sentences. The design of this work was to place before the student, in as strictly logical a form as practicable, the views (sententiae) of the fathers and all the great doctors of the church upon the chief and most difficult points in the Christian belief. Conceived with the purpose of allaying and preventing, it really stimulated, controversy. The logicians seized upon it as a great storehouse of indisputable major premises, on which they argued with renewed energy and with endless ingenuity of dialectical refinement; and upon this new compendium of theological doctrine, which became the text-book of the middle ages, the school men, in their successive treatises Super sententias, expended a considerable share of that subtlety and labour which still excite the astonishment of the student of metaphysical literature.
It is in these prominent features in the history of these early universities—the development of new methods of instruction Rise of other early universities. concurrently with the appearance of new material for their application—that we find the most probable solution of the question as to how the university, as distinguished from the older cathedral or monastic schools, was first formed. In a similar manner, it seems probable, the majority of the earlier universities of Italy—Reggio, Modena, Vicenza, Padua and Vercelli—arose, for they had their origin independently alike of the civil and the papal authority. Instances, it is true, occur, which cannot be referred to this spontaneous mode of growth. The university of Naples, for example, was founded solely by the fiat of the emperor Frederick II. in the year 1224; and, if we may rely upon the documents cited by Denifle, Innocent IV. about the year 1245 founded in connexion with the curia a “studium generale,”[2] which was attached to the papal court, and followed it when removed from Rome, very much as the Palace School of Charles the Great accompanied that monarch on his progresses.
As the university of Paris became the model, not only for the universities of France north of the Loire, but also for the Early organization of the university of Paris. great majority of those of central Europe as well as for Oxford and Cambridge, some account of its early organization will here be indispensable. Such an account is rendered still further necessary by the fact that the recent and almost exhaustive researches of Denifle, the Dominican father, have led him to conclusions which on some important points run altogether counter to those sanctioned by the high authority of Savigny.
The original university, as already stated, took its rise entirely out of the movement carried on by teachers on the island, who taught by virtue of the licence conferred by the chancellor of the cathedral. In the second decade of the 13th century, it is true, we find masters withdrawing themselves from his authority by repairing to the left bank of the Seine and placing themselves under the jurisdiction of the abbot of the monastery of Ste Geneviève; and in 1255 this dignitary is to be found appointing a chancellor whose duty it should be to confer licentia docendi on those candidates who were desirous of opening schools in that district. But it was around the bestowal of this licence by the chancellor of Notre Dame, on the Île de la Cité, that the university of Paris grew up. It is in this licence that the whole significance of the master of arts degree is contained; Inception. for what is technically known as admission to that degree was really nothing more nor less than receiving the chancellor's permission to “incept,” and by “inception” was implied the master's formal entrance upon, and commencement of, the functions of a duly licensed teacher, and his recognition as such by his brothers in the profession. The previous stage of his academic career, that of The bachelor of arts. bachelordom, had been one of apprenticeship for the mastership; and his emancipation from this state was symbolized by placing the magisterial cap (biretta) upon his head, a ceremony which, in imitation of the old Roman ceremony of manumission, was performed by his former instructor, “under whom” he was said to incept. He then gave a formal inaugural lecture, and, after this proof of magisterial capacity, was welcomed into the society of his professional brethren with set speeches, and took his seat in his master's chair.
This community of teachers of recognized fitness did not in itself suffice to constitute a university, but some time between The university formed. the years 1150 and 1170, the period when the Sentences of Peter Lombard were given to the world, the university of Paris came formally into being. Its first written statutes were not, however, compiled until about the year 1208, and it was not until long after that date that it possessed a “rector.” Its earliest recognition as a legal corporation belongs to about the year 1211, when a brief of Innocent III. empowered it to elect a proctor to be its representative at the papal court. By this permission it obtained the right to sue or to be sued in a court of justice as a corporate body.
This papal recognition was, however, very far from implying the episcopal recognition, and the earlier history of the Difficulties of first development. new community exhibits it as in continual conflict alike with the chancellor, the bishop and the cathedral chapter of Paris, by all of whom it was regarded as a centre of insubordination and doctrinal licence. Had it not been, indeed, for the papal aid, the university would probably not have survived the contest; but with that powerful assistance it came to be regarded as the great Transalpine centre of orthodox theological teaching. Successive pontiffs, down to the great schism of 1378, made it one of the foremost points of their policy to cultivate friendly and confidential relations with the authorities of the university of Paris, and systematically to discourage the formation of theological faculties at other centres. In 1231 Gregory IX., in the bull Parens Scientiarum, gave full recognition to the right of the several faculties to regulate and modify the constitution of the entire university—a formal sanction which, in Denifle's opinion, rendered the bull in question the Magna Charta of the university.
In comparing the relative antiquity of the universities of Paris and Bologna, it is difficult to give an unqualified decision. The university of masters at the former was probably slightly anterior to the university of students at the latter; but there is good reason for believing that Paris, in reducing its traditional customs to statutory form, largely availed itself of the precedents afforded by the already existing code of the Transalpine centre. The fully developed university was divided into four faculties—three “superior,” viz. those of theology, canon law and medicine, and one “inferior,” and that of arts, which was divided into four “nations.” These nations, which included both professors and scholars, were—(1) the French nation, composed, The “nations.” in addition to the native element, of Spaniards, Italians and Greeks; (2) the Picard nation, representing the students from the north-east and from the Netherlands; (3) the Norman nation; (4) the English nation, comprising, besides students from the provinces under English rule, those from England, Ireland, Scotland and
- ↑ The view of Thurot (De l'organisation de l'enseignement dans l'université de Paris, pp. 4-7) that the university arose out of a combination of these several schools is rejected by Denifle (see Die Universitäten, &c., i. 653-94).
- ↑ Where the words studium generale are placed within marks of quotation they occur in the original charter of foundation of the university referred to.
