All Things Medieval

Copying the guilds, which had developed special “livery” robes for their members to wear on parade, lecturers and masters (graduates) began to wear a uniform robe and hat based on the fashion of the times. Many lecturers were monks, so their robes were variants of their order (Dominican and Franciscan usually). Physicians wore special hats in the medieval period, which influenced these outfits too. By the end of the period, Doctors of Theology wore black robes and hats at the University of Paris—our model for the graduation cap and gown. But Doctors of Law in Italy wore red robes edged with fur–take that!

University students did not believe they were under the laws and charter of the town and tended to break its laws flagrantly. They gambled and drank, partied and rioted. In 1355, students rioted in Oxford; several students and townies died, and some colleges went up in flames.

The standard mode of teaching was the formal debate. The professor would propound a question, such as, “Whether lightning be fire that comes down from the clouds?” and a student would begin the response with “principal arguments” to the affirmative. Next, other students or the teacher would pose contradictory arguments. Without real scientific facts, they based arguments on philosophers such as Aristotle. It was a chance to show off logic, rhetoric and reading depth.

Textbooks were copied by hand, but copying industries grew up around universities. It was a type of home-based work that the few educated women could do, and while expensive parchment was used for much of the Middle Ages, in the later times, the new paper industry made short books affordable. It was probably also a line of work for university dropouts or men who had been novices in a monastery without taking the vows.

Textbooks were typically short sections of a longer work, easy to carry to class. They were unlike the famous illustrated manuscripts and much more like modern books. Wide margins provided space to take notes; texts were carefully paragraphed and some red letters (“rubrics”) helped to organize the text visually. As an innovation to help students read at a glance, words had spaces and more attention was paid to punctuation. If you look at typical medieval Bibles, you’ll see just how little they cared about space and readability there.

If you were a student who needed the works of Aristotle for lectures, you would never buy a “collected works” volume as we do. Each work, or each major section of a work, would be bound by itself. Textbook shops in university towns sold these short, practical folios, but they also rented copies. Students who bought paper could rent a book and copy their own, for a small savings.

“Colleges” as divisions within the university came about as students faced problems in getting good housing. Students could arrive for university studies as young as 14 or 15.

Medieval rich people often donated money at death to found some kind of ongoing work that would promise to pray for their souls. Monasteries and chapels were the most obvious targets, but some began endowing boarding houses for university students. Theology was always a portion of the first four years’ study, even if students went on to law or medicine, so it was presumed that these young men would be a very good prayer cohort. The founder might specify that his own descendants be preferred, or he might specify a certain number of students who could not pay their own way. At the Sorbonne, the first college was a boarding house for poor theology students at the University of Paris (which offered only theology).

When Chaucer described a student at Oxford, he included the fact that this scholar was under constant obligation to pray for his benefactors. https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/general-prologue-0

A CLERK ther was of Oxenford also,
                 There was also a CLERK (scholar) from Oxford,
286         That unto logyk hadde longe ygo.
                 Who long before had begun the study of logic.
287         As leene was his hors as is a rake,
                 His horse was as lean as is a rake,
288         And he nas nat right fat, I undertake,
                 And he was not very fat, I affirm,
289         But looked holwe, and therto sobrely.
                 But looked emaciated, and moreover abstemious.
290         Ful thredbare was his overeste courtepy,
                 His short overcoat was very threadbare,
291         For he hadde geten hym yet no benefice,
                 For he had not yet obtained an ecclesiastical living,
292         Ne was so worldly for to have office.
                 Nor was he worldly enough to take secular employment.
293         For hym was levere have at his beddes heed
                 For he would rather have at the head of his bed
294         Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,
                 Twenty books, bound in black or red,
295         Of Aristotle and his philosophie
                 Of Aristotle and his philosophy
296         Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie.
                 Than rich robes, or a fiddle, or an elegant psaltery.
297         But al be that he was a philosophre,
                 But even though he was a philosopher,
298         Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;
                 Nevertheless he had but little gold in his strongbox;
299         But al that he myghte of his freendes hente,
                 But all that he could get from his friends,
300         On bookes and on lernynge he it spente,
                 He spent on books and on learning,
301         And bisily gan for the soules preye
                 And diligently did pray for the souls
302         Of hem that yaf hym wherwith to scoleye.
                 Of those who gave him the wherewithal to attend the schools.
303         Of studie took he moost cure and moost heede.
                 He took most care and paid most heed to study.
304         Noght o word spak he moore than was neede,
                 He spoke not one word more than was needed,
305         And that was seyd in forme and reverence,
                 And that was said with due formality and respect,
306         And short and quyk and ful of hy sentence;
                 And short and lively and full of elevated content;
307         Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche,
                 His speech was consonant with moral virtue,
308         And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.
                 And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.

Endowing a college meant setting up a house with some basic staff: cook and laundress. Then someone had to oversee the selection of residents and make sure they prayed for the founder, so colleges also needed manciples or deans. Students who lived in colleges were better behaved, compared to the students who lived in town and were constantly disorderly. College manciples could evict residents who did not follow rules like chapel attendance and curfew. Universities became more respectable places as the college system developed. By the late Middle Ages, some colleges charged living fees, but many students were still taken on full or partial scholarship. The poorest might have to help serve dinner, but they still had the respect of wealthier boys since they had won their places by competition.

Colleges proliferated and grew into communities of more than a boarding house. To help its students, a college built up a library of common textbooks. Then, to help them more, in addition to their attending university-contracted lectures, a college’s residents could work with tutors hired by the college itself. These tutors lived and taught right there on site.

Before the college housing system, universities had no real buildings. The colleges that grew up around them became the first campuses and gave the university brick and mortar solidity. Colleges also promoted the ideal of a scholarly community. Students who lived in other rooms sometimes became petty thieves, in addition to rioting and setting fires. Colleges turned it around; they provided quiet study halls, libraries, tutors, and common dining as we expect today.

I don’t suppose most of them still pray for the founders’ souls, but let’s hope that those generous souls made it out of purgatory long ago.

Very few medieval schoolboys were destined to continue to university, but some did. University was preparation for only a few careers: professor, lawyer, doctor, theologian, or dropout. Dropouts tended to become private tutors and secretaries, stand-up comedians on a jongleur circuit, or magicians and alchemists. These last were rare, but the dropout’s knowledge of university subjects is what gave us the movie trope of reading Latin backwards to summon demons.

It’s worth remembering that university professors, church (Canon Law) lawyers, and theologians were traditionally unmarried. The university path did not lead to the church steps. In the story of Peter Abelard and his student Heloise, it only makes sense if we understand that Abelard’s career at the University of Paris depended on his remaining single. Heloise begged him not to marry her, and when he did marry her, her uncle strongly suspected that it was part of a plan to shuffle her off somewhere and continue his career. We wonder why he didn’t just rent a small house and settle in with a wife, and keep lecturing. But to be a university lecturer, a man had to be at least a Canon, the lowest and most secular office of the Church — but still, within the Church.

The first university was specifically for law, at Bologna. Paris and Oxford began next, as theology schools run by the church. Salerno, Italy had an independent medical school, but at Milan and Pisa, medicine was included in a larger university. By the 1300s, most cities had a university.

The entrance exam for university was a challenging test of ability with Latin. Europe continued to pretend, for a long time, that Latin was its real language and that its native tongues were just unlettered vulgar degradations of Latin. University subjects were “advanced” mainly because they were taught in spoken Latin. One of the boundary markers between “medieval” and “early modern” is the switch away from Latin’s use in all books, lectures, note-taking and exams.

The early university was, at base, a small staff surrounding the Bedellus (dean), who undertook to give a challenging graduation examination in logic, rhetoric, music, astronomy, arithmetic and geometry. Students contracted privately with lecturers who could help prepare them for these exams. Lecturers with high success rates drew more students. Students and scholars organized into associations (universitates) for enforcing contract terms so really, collective bargaining created the “university.”

Students held all of the power in the medieval university. They hired and fired lecturers at will. They forced them to start (and end) lectures on time — or pay fines. Lecturers were fined for being absent or for skipping some of the curriculum. Lecturers used their bargaining power with students only to get standardized fees.

In the next few entries, I’ll cover the development of the university into something that looks like what we know today. It’s important to understand that at the start, it was merely a cluster of students who lived in rented rooms and hired lecturers to prepare them for exit exams. Hiring the lecture hall may have been up to the lecturers or the students. The university collected a nominal fee from its students until graduation. As an institution, its power consisted only of granting the diploma, so that’s when the punishingly high fees kicked in. This is why there were so many dropouts. A poor young man could afford to attend lectures, but he couldn’t afford to graduate.