The first university in Scotland was that of St Andrews, founded in 1411 by Henry Wardlaw, bishop of that see, and St Andrews. modelled chiefly on the constitution of the university of Paris. It acquired all its three colleges—St Salvator's, St Leonard's and St Mary's—before the Reformation—the first having been founded in 1456 by Bishop James Kennedy; the second in 1512 by the youthful Archbishop Alexander Stuart (natural son of James IV.), and John Hepburn, the prior of the monastery of St Andrews; and the third, also in 1512, by the Beatons, who in the year 1537 procured a bull from Pope Paul III. dedicating the college to the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Assumption, and adding further endowments. The most ancient of the universities of Scotland, with its three colleges, was thus reared in an atmosphere of medieval theology, and undoubtedly designed as a bulwark against heresy and schism. But “by a strange irony of fate,” it has been observed, “two of these colleges became, almost from the first, the foremost agents in working the overthrow of that church which they were founded to defend.” St Leonard's more especially, like St John's or Queens' at Cambridge, became a noted centre of intellectual life and Reformation principles. That he “had drunk at St Leonard's well” became a current expression for implying that a theologian had imbibed Glasgow. the doctrines of Protestantism. The university of Glasgow was founded as a “studium generale” in 1453, and possessed two colleges. Prior to the Reformation it acquired but little celebrity; its discipline was lax, and the number of the students but small, while the instruction was not only inefficient but irregularly given; no funds were provided for the maintenance of regular lectures in the higher faculties; and there was no adequate executive power for the maintenance of discipline. The university of Aberdeen, which was founded in 1494, at first possessed only one college, Aberdeen. namely, King's, which was coextensive with the university and conferred degrees. Marischal College, founded in 1593 by George Keith, fifth Earl Marischal, was constituted by its founder independent of the university in Old Aberdeen, being itself also a college and a university, with the power of conferring degrees. Bishop Elphinstone, the founder both of the university and of King's College (1505), had been educated at Glasgow, and had subsequently both studied and taught at Paris and at Orleans. To the wider experience which he had thus gained we may probably attribute the fact that the constitution of the university of Aberdeen was free from the glaring defects which then characterized that of the university of Glasgow.[1] But in all the medieval universities of Germany, England and Scotland, modelled as they were on a common type, the absence of adequate discipline was, in a greater or less degree, a common defect. In connexion with this feature we may note the comparatively small percentage of matriculated students proceeding to the degree of B.A. and M.A. when compared with later times. Of this disparity the table on next Degrees taken at Leipzig. column, exhibiting the relative numbers in the university of Leipzig for every ten years from the year 1427 to 1552, probably affords a fair average illustration—the remarkable fluctuations probably depending quite as much upon the comparative healthiness of the period (in respect of freedom from epidemic) and the abundance of the harvests as upon any other cause.
| Years. | Matriculations. | Years. | B.A. | M.A. | Percentage of | |
| B.A's. | M.A's. | |||||
| 1427-1430 | 737 | 1429-1432 | 151 | 28 | 20.4 | 3.8 |
| 1437-1440 | 715 | 1439-1442 | 199 | 50 | 27.8 | 6.9 |
| 1447-1450 | 808 | 1449-1452 | 274 | (50) | 33.9 | .. |
| 1457-1460 | 1,447 | 1459-1462 | 559 | 81 | 38.6 | 5.6 |
| 1467-1470 | 1,137 | 1469-1472 | 410 | 61 | 36.0 | 5.4 |
| 1477-1480 | 1,163 | 1479-1482 | 458 | 49 | 39.4 | 4.2 |
| 1487-1490 | 1,858 | 1489-1492 | 714 | 62 | 38.4 | 3.4 |
| 1497-1500 | 1,288 | 1499-1502 | 497 | 59 | 38.5 | 4.6 |
| 1507-1510 | 1,948 | 1509-1512 | 510 | 65 | 26.1 | 3.4 |
| 1517-1520 | 1,445 | 1519-1522 | 247 | 35 | 17.0 | 2.4 |
| 1527-1530 | 419 | 1529-1532 | 77 | 33 | 18.4 | 7.9 |
| 1537-1540 | 686 | 1539-1542 | 122 | 27 | 17.8 | 3.9 |
| 1547-1550 | 1,318 | 1549-1552 | 200 | 72 | 15.2 | 5.5 |
| 14,969 | 4418 | 672 | 29.5 | 4.5 | ||
The German universities in these times seem to have admitted for the most part their inferiority in learning to older and more General aspects of German medieval universities. favoured centres; and their consciousness of the fact is shown by the efforts which they made to attract instructors from Italy, and by the frequent resort of the more ambitious students to schools like Paris, Bologna, Padua and Pavia. That they took their rise in any spirit of systematic opposition to the Roman see (as Meiners and others have contended), or that their organization was something external to and independent of the church, is an assertion somewhat qualified by the foregoing evidence. Generally speaking, they were eminently conservative bodies, and the new learning of the humanists and the new methods of instruction that now began to demand attention were alike for a long period unable to gain admission within academic circles. Reformers such as Hegius, John Wessel and Rudolphus Agricola carried on their work at places like Deventer remote from university influences. That there was a considerable amount of mental activity going on in the universities themselves is not to be denied; but it was mostly of that unprofitable kind which, while giving rise to endless controversy, turned upon questions in connexion with which the implied postulates and the terminology employed rendered all scientific investigation hopeless. At almost every university—Leipzig, Greifswald and Prague (after 1409) being the principal exceptions—the so-called Realists and Nominalists represented two great parties occupied with an internecine struggle. At Paris, owing to the overwhelming strength of the theologians, the Nominalists were indeed under a kind of ban; but at Heidelberg they had altogether expelled their antagonists. It was much the same at Vienna and at Erfurt—the latter, from the ready reception which it gave to new speculation, being styled by its enemies “novorum omnium portus.” At Basel, under the leadership of the eminent Johannes a Lapide, the Realists with difficulty maintained their ground. Freiburg, Tübingen and Ingolstadt, in the hope of diminishing controversy, arrived at a kind of compromise, each party having its own professor, and representing a distinct “nation.” At Mainz the authorities adopted a manual of logic which was essentially an embodiment of Nominalistic principles.
In Italy, almost without exception, it was decided that these controversies were endless and that their effects were pernicious. Abandonment of logical studies in Italy. It was resolved, accordingly, to expel logic, and allow its place to be filled by rhetoric. It was by virtue of this decision, which was of a tacit rather than a formal character, that the expounders of the new learning in the 15th century—men like Emmanuel Chrysoloras, Guarino, Leonardo Bruni, Bessarion, Argyropulos and Valla—carried into effect that important revolution in academic studies which constitutes a new era in university learning, and largely helped to pave the way for the Reformation.[2] This discouragement of the controversial spirit, continued as it was in relation to theological questions after the Reformation, obtained for the Italian universities a fortunate immunity from dissensions like those which, as we shall shortly see, distracted the centres of High reputation of Italian professors. learning in Germany. The professorial body also attained to an almost unrivalled reputation. It was exceptionally select, only those who were in receipt of salaries being permitted, as a rule, to lecture; it was also famed for its ability, the institution of concurrent chairs proving an excellent stimulus. These chairs were of two kinds—“ordinary” and “extraordinary”—the former being the more liberally endowed and fewer in number. For each subject of importance there were thus always two and sometimes three rival chairs, and a powerful and continuous emulation was thus maintained among the teachers. “From
