Kindle Notes & Highlights
In this picture the schoolboy is seen arriving with his satchel and being presented with a hornbook by Nicostrata, the Latin muse Carmentis, who changed the Greek alphabet into the Latin. She admits him by the key of congruitas to the House of Wisdom
Typus Grammaticae
Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars," Proverbs ix. 1).
"University." Its literal meaning is simply an association. Recent writers on University history have pointed out that Universitas vestra, in a letter addressed to a body of persons, means merely "the whole of you" and that the term was by no means restricted to learned bodies.
The word "College" affords us no further enlightenment. It, too, means literally a community or association, and, unlike the sister term University, it has never become restricted to a scholastic association.
The twelfth century produced in Europe a renewal of interest and a revival of learning, brought about partly by the influence of great thinkers like St Anselm and Abelard, and partly by the discovery of lost works of Aristotle.
It was inevitable that there should be a rivalry among these numerous schools, a rivalry which was accentuated as small and insignificant Studia came to claim for themselves equality of status with their older and greater contemporaries. Thus, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, there arose a necessity for a definition and a restriction of the term Studium Generale.
In the first half of the thirteenth century, the term Studium Generale was assuming recognised significance; a school which aspired to the name must not be restricted to natives of a particular town or country, it must have a number of masters, and it must teach not only the Seven Liberal Arts (of which we shall have to speak later), but also one or more of the higher studies of Theology, Law and Medicine
A Universitas was an association in the world of learning which corresponded to a Guild in the world of commerce, a union among men living in a Studium and possessing some common interests to protect and advance.
The words "Doctor," "Professor," and "Magister" or "Dominus" were at first used indifferently, and a Master of Arts of a Scottish or a German University is still described on his diploma as a Doctor of Philosophy.
The masters were the teachers of the Studium, and they protected their own interests by forming a guild the members of which, and they alone, had the right to teach. Graduation was originally admission into the guild of masters, and the chief privilege attached to it was the right to teach.
The quadrangular shape which is now associated with the buildings of a College was probably suggested accidentally by the development of Walter de Merton's College at Oxford; but, long after the foundation of Merton College in 1263 or 1264, it was not considered necessary by a founder to build a home for his scholars, who secured a suitable lodging-house (or houses) and were prepared to migrate should such a step become desirable in the interest of the University.
The Merton rule that conversation must be in Latin is generally found in College statutes. At Peterhouse, French might occasionally be spoken, should just and reasonable cause arise, but English very rarely. At New College, Latin was to be spoken even in the garden, though English might be used in addressing a layman. At Queen's College, Oxford, which was founded by a courtier, French was allowed as a regular alternative for Latin, and at Jesus College, Oxford, conversation might be in Greek, Latin, or Hebrew.
if a man carries wine out of the College illicitly, he is to pay for double the quantity to be drunk by the members who were present at the time;
If a stranger is introduced without leave ("ad mensam communitatis ad comedendum vel videndum secretum mensae"), the penalty is a quart of good wine for the fellows present in Hall.
For unseemly noise, especially at meals, and at time of prayers, the ordinary penalty is a quart of ordinary wine ("vini mediocris"). For speaking in the vernacular, there is a fine of "the price of a pint of wine," but, as the usual direction about drinking it, is omitted, this was probably not a sconce; at the Cistercian College, the penalty for this offence was a sconce.
St Andrews, which allowed hawking, forbade the dangerous game of football.
The designation, "bejaunus" or bajan, which signifies yellow-beak ("bec jaune"), seems to have been given almost everywhere to the freshman, and the custom of receiving the fledgeling into the academic society was, towards the close of the Middle Ages, no mere tradition of student etiquette, but an acknowledged and admitted academic rite.
Oxford history abounds in town and gown riots, the most famous of which is the battle of St Scholastica's Day (10th February) 1354. The riot originated in a tavern quarrel; some clerks disapproved of the wine at an inn near Carfax, and (in Antony Wood's words) "the vintner giving them stubborn and saucy language, they threw the wine and vessel at his head."
A mob at once assembled, armed with bows and arrows and other weapons; they attacked every scholar who passed, and even fired at the Chancellor when he attempted to allay the tumult.
The student of a medieval University was, as we have seen, expected to converse in Latin, and all instruction was given in that language. It was therefore essential that, before entering on the University curriculum, he should have a competent knowledge of Latin.
The basis of the medieval curriculum in Arts is to be found in the Seven Liberal Arts of the Dark Ages, divided into the Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectic) and the Quadrivium (Music, Arithmetic, Geometry and Astronomy).
but the introduction of mathematical learning from Arabian sources in the thirteenth century greatly increased the scope of Geometry and Arithmetic, and added the study of Algebra.
Latin poets were read in the grammar schools, and served for grammatical and philological expositions in the universities, and the study of Rhetoric depended largely on the treatises of Cicero.
The "Dialectic" of the Trivium was the real interest of the medieval student among the ancient seven subjects,
The universities were schools of philosophy, mental and physical, and the attention of students in Arts was chiefly directed to the logic, metaphysics, physics, and ethics of Aristotle. Up to the twelfth century, Aristotle was known only through the translations into Latin of the sections of the Organon, entitled De Interpretatione and Categoriae, and through the logical works of Boethius.
Aristotle from translations partly from the Arabic and partly direct from the Greek.
In addition to the works of Aristotle, as they were known in the Middle Ages, medieval students read such books as Porphyry's Isagoge, or Introduction to Aristotle; the criticism of Aristotle's Categories, by Gilbert de la Porrée, known as the Sex Principia; the Summulae Logicales, a semi-grammatical, semi-logical treatise by Petrus Hispanus (Pope John XXI.); the Parva Logicalia of Marsilius of Inghen; the Labyrinthus and Grecismus of Eberhard; the Scriptural commentaries of Nicolaus de Lyra; the Tractatus de Sphaera, an astronomical work by a thirteenth-century
In 1431 the Nova Rhetorica of Cicero, the Metamorphoses of Ovid, and the works of Virgil were prescribed at Oxford as alternatives to the fourth book of the Topica of Boethius.
