Life in the medieval university / by Robert S. Rait.

  • Robert Rait
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Life in the medieval university / by Robert S. Rait. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    two great northern sisters lies in the fact that, at Paris and at Oxford, masters and scholars alike were all clerks, possessing the tonsure and wearing the clerical garb, though not necessarily even in minor orders. They could thus claim the privileges of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and at Oxford this juris- diction was, exercised by the Chancellor, who also, along with the proctors, was responsible for academic discipline and could settle disputes between members of the University. In this, the Univer- sity of Oxford had a position of independence which Paris never achieved, for though the Parisian Rector’s court dealt with cases of discipline and with internal disputes, criminal jurisdiction re- mained the prerogative of the Bishop. In the middle of the fourteenth century, royal grants of privileges to the University of Oxford culminated in the subjection of the city, and from the middle of the fifteenth “ the burghers lived in their own town almost as the helots or subjects of a con- quering people.” (Cf. Rashdall, vol. ii. chap. 12, sec. 3). The constitution of Oxford was closely imitated at Cambridge, where the Head of the University was also the Chapcellor, and the execu- tive consisted of two rectors or proctors. In the fifteenth century the University freed itself from the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of Ely. Germany possessed no universities before the