Foundings

The institutions which the Middle Age has bequeathed to us are of greater and more imperishable value even than its cathedrals.

HASTINGS RASHDALL

Universities, like cathedrals and parliaments, were unique creations of Western Europe and the Middle Ages. They arose in the twelfth century in the midst of propitious change. The "barbarian" and "infidel" invasions from the north, south, and east had finally been thwarted, and the Crusades had even begun to direct Europe's martial energies outward. The resulting political stability, increased agricultural productivity, and new and improved roads fostered the growth of population, towns, trade, and the Roman Catholic Church.

As the Papacy extended its reach, it became clear that the inward-looking monasteries and even the newer cathedral schools could not provide the advanced training needed by the Church's growing ranks of priests, missionaries, and administrators. Nor could the rudimentary town schools prepare the personnel required by the burgeoning civil bureaucracies, particularly royal and imperial, that sought to preserve the fragile peace and to promote the social welfare. Those schools taught only the Seven Liberal Arts of antiquity and the early Middle Ages, and not the influx of "new" Greco-Roman and Arabic learning — in philosophy, mathematics, science, medicine, and law — that arrived after 1100 through Italy and Sicily but chiefly via Arab scholars and translators in Spain. These conditions stimulated the advent of the university, one of the very few European institutions that have preserved their fundamental patterns and basic social roles and functions over the course of history.

The earliest universities and even a few later ones have no firm birthdates. This causes no end of trouble when their older selves wish to celebrate major milestones. Cambridge has it easy in the ninth year of every new century because it was established — and well documented — in 1209 by professors and scholars fleeing Oxford after a legal and literal battle with the city and king over the discipline of the university's members. But the earliest bona fide universities have had to be more arbitrary in selecting commemorative dates. In the latest and most comprehensive history of European universities, Bologna's founding is located sometime at the "end of the twelfth century," while Paris, Oxford, and Montpellier secured their corporate existence in the "beginning of the thirteenth century."

The earliest founding dates are hard to pin down because those institutions were not created by royal, papal, or imperial decree but instead grew slowly and incrementally, leaving thin paper or parchment trails. Like most twelfth- and thirteenth-century universities, they began as schools belonging to monasteries, towns, or cathedral chapters. Some schools featured only a single charismatic teacher, such as Peter Abelard, who attracted clerics and the occasional layman interested in education higher than they could find locally. But the gathering of critical numbers soon led to the need for physical enlargement, faculty specialization, and new organization. These nascent universities only later received legal sanction, often piecemeal, from the powers-that-were, whereas later institutions largely did so in full at their starts.

Many studia, or advanced schools, functioned effectively as universities before they received privileges or full recognition from the pope, or even before they drafted statutes by which to govern themselves. Bologna, Paris, and Oxford were operating as genuine studia generalia no later than 1215. That is, their guild-like organizations of masters and students exercised a high degree of legal autonomy, elected their own officers, controlled their own finances, attracted students from a wide area (generale), offered instruction in one or more of the higher faculties of law, medicine, or theology as well as the seven foundational liberal arts, and conferred degrees and teaching licenses that were, in theory at least, honored by other universities. Bologna's first statutes were not written until 1252, and its status as a studium generale was not confirmed until 1291, when the pope gave its graduates the privilege of ius ubique docendi, "the right to teach anywhere" papal power reached. Paris received the same privilege the following year, although it had statutes on the books in 1215 and 1231. For reasons unknown, Oxford — across the English Channel — never received the pope's confirmation as a studium generale, despite the pleas of two kings. Cambridge and Edward II were successful in 1318.

In addition to their urban settings, universities were characterized by their formal privileges, which distinguished them from other social institutions. These grants, rights, and immunities sprang from Roman precedents that protected teachers and scholars of the liberal arts, particularly grammar and rhetoric. The medieval Church extended this protection because the arts were necessary to read and interpret Scripture. Even lay scholars without the tonsure enjoyed clerical status, subject to ecclesiastical law, and were immune from the jurisdiction of feudal and local civil courts. In 1155 Emperor Frederick I (Frederick Barbarossa) issued the Authentic Habita to guarantee protection and safe conduct to all teachers and students traveling to and from seats of learning throughout the Holy Roman Empire.

As soon as faculty and students began to organize into their respective guilds and confraternities for academic effectiveness and self-protection, those in high authority gave them yet more written privilegia. These they carefully preserved in bound volumes and resorted to when local, church, or royal officials sought to ignore or deny them. Clergymen with church benefices, or "livings," were allowed to draw their salaries while they were absent pursuing university degrees or teaching. All students, faculty, and even university booksellers enjoyed deferment from military drafts and municipal obligations, such as night watch, guard duty, and roadwork. Scholars were not to be physically assaulted or their premises invaded. If they were arrested, they could choose their judges. Qualified M.A. and doctoral degree candidates were to be issued the licentia docendi (the license to teach) without fee, promise, or condition. Customs duties could not be laid on scholars' books, nor could those volumes be seized for debt. Rents were to be fair and premises clean; study-disturbing noise and noisome smells emanating from the work of neighbors were prohibited. The quality and price of food, drink, books, and writing parchment were regulated. In Paris at least, scholars' houses were tax exempt. Needless to say, the favoritism shown to the scholars often exacerbated town-gown tensions, which frequently burst into violence.

The most essential privileges were two. The first...