THE UNIVERSITIES OF EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.*

MR. RASHDALL is, indeed, to be congratulated. He has accomplished a task which few would have dared to under- take ; and we venture to think that in the twelve years during which he has been more or less occupied in writing this book other men would have got little further than the introduction. The materials are obviously enormous, and the daily tempta- tions to delay and digression must have been almost irresis- tible. That a history of the Universities in the Middle Ages has been carried through on a definite plan is, then, a triumph of method. No one could hope to deal with the manuscript sources of information to any great extent ; Mr. Rashdal/ does not attempt it except in the cases of Oxford, Cambridge, St. Andrews, and Paris. We can go further and say that no • The Universities of Europe in the 3/Ititt1c Ages. By Hastings Rashdall, Oxford : Clarendon Preee.

one could possibly have epitomised at length all the printed materials, day by day increasing in bulk ; and here, again, Mr. Rashdall has adopted a singularly happy method. He has described, "with tolerable fulness, the three great archetypal Universities, Bologna, Paris, and Oxford," and has given "short notices of the foundation, constitution, and history of the others, arranged in national groups." In dealing with each University he has chiefly attended to its constitu- tional history, though he has also necessarily "touched upon the growth of the scholastic philosophy and theology and the development of legal and medical science." Such is in outline the plan of this book. In that it is a contribution to the history of institutions, it follows the direction in which most remains to be done by English historians. We are in no danger of comparing it with anything written in this country hitherto. It has built into it the stuff of which many mono- graphs have been made, but apart from the fact that many date from an uncritical age, they none of them dealt with the subject as a whole. There is immense gain when the com- parative method becomes possible ; in fact, this constant comparison of constitutions is to our mind the most valuable feature of the work. Angers is compared with Orleans, Cracow with Bologna and the German Universities, Montpellier with Oxford and Bologna. The proof is made possible of the doctrine stated at the outset "that the Universities of all

.countries and ages are, in reality, adaptations under various 'conditions of one and the same institution." There is, indeed, an analogy between the Universities and the towns of the Middle Ages. The constitution of one was copied by another; often the fact is expressly mentioned. Bordeaux was said, in the Ball founding it in 1441, to be ad instar Stadii Tolosani; Poitiers also. Ingoldstadt received the privileges of Vienna.

Occasionally, more than one model was taken, Valence en- joyed the privileges of Orleans, Toulouse, and Montpellier; the Universities of Spain had traces of both Parisian and Bolognese influences.

It would be easy to select from this great mass of informa- tion passages of peculiar interest to those whose training and sympathies are academic. One might criticise, even though it were difficult to controvert, the statement that-

" Up to the end of the fourteenth century—that is DO say, virtually up to the downfall of Scholasticism—Cambridge was a third-rate University ; its position relatively to Oxford was the position of Erlangen or Greifswald as compared with Berlin.

. . . . Not a single great schoolman can be shown to have taught at Cambridge : it is hard to produce the name, I will not say of a great man, but of a prominent Ecclesiastic, who studied at Cam- bridge before the middle of the fourteenth century."

For we do not readily recognise this distinction between third-rate and first-rate Universities. And as to the facts of the early history of Cambridge, the theory that those who went there in 1209 went there because there was something to go for, does not strike us as necessarily to be rejected. We also humbly suggest that the reference in the Annales Pauline as to Thomas Cobham's education at Cambridge tells rather against Mr. Rashdall's strong statements, as also seem to do one or two passages in the Munimenta Aeadenrica ; though we are bound to confess that we find other evidence which supports what he says on this matter. Again, one might take as a hard saying the remark that

Da Boulay was "perhaps the stupidest man that ever wrote a valuable book." Or one could puzzle over the different variations in constitution which the Universities presented, and could realise under Mr. Rashdall's guidance the meaning of vanishing formalities, expressions, and dresses, and here, at least, Cambridge is distinguished.

It is perhaps of more importance, especially just now, to glance at student life in the Middle Ages, and also at a few general conclusions arrived at by Mr. Rashdall. The impres- sion, hitherto entertained but not unquestioned, that the age of entrance was, as a rule, very early is confirmed ; as a rule the freshman would be between thirteen and sixteen." But, in spite of his tender age, he seems to have lived in a state of unruly freedom. "As to University discipline as we should understand it,there was in the thirteenth century really no such thing." Many of the ideas prevalent on this subject have in

fact been formed from the consideration of much later times,—

the days of the birch. In those Universities where the college eystem prevailed a gradually increasing severity slowly took the place of the earlier freedom, but in the Middle Ages proper the undergraduate was addicted to the wildest follies, and not seldom to follies that were crimes of the most danger- ous character. It was no doubt only a small number of the students in each University who fought with pole-axes and interfered with the hangman in the execution of his duty, but the following passage is significant :—

" The violence of medieval University life was almost equalled by its bibulosity. Even the staunchest teetotaller might well accord a certain toleration to drinking habits in a community which knew not tea, coffee, or tobacco, and in which life, un- brightened by wine or beer, must have been almost intolerably tedious. In this respect, it is true that it is but recently that our English Universities have begun to throw off their medieval traditions; there are Universities in which it reigns still. But there can be no better illustration of the nonsense commonly talked about the moralising and elevating effects—I will not say of education—but of mere instruction than the annals of the medieval Schools. The average medieval scholar was much better instructed, much more cultivated (in so far as purely intellectual training communicates culture), than the mass of the working class can ever be on leaving school. Yet his habits, his manners, and his moral tone generally were in many ways no better than those of the roughest and most uncivilised classes of modern society. From an evening tour through sonic of the worst dens and alleys of Seven Dials and Ratcliffe Highway, before the institution of the Metropolitan Police, there might have been gathered some faint conception of what life in a medieval University town must have been like, say at the end of the thirteenth century."

But as an off-set to this state of thing, we must remember the truth which Mr. Rashdall embodies in the following :—

" The great work of the Universities was the Consecration of Learning : and it is not easy to exaggerate the importance of that work upon the moral, intellectual, and religious progress of

Europe The earnest students were probably—except perhaps in the age of Abelard or in the very first flush of the Aristotelian Renaissance—a minority. Yet there must have been an immense mass of real intellectual enthusiasm for the development of a University to become possible."

The lessons which will be learned by those who read this deeply interesting book cannot be even indicated. Mr. Rashdall would, as we can see from many a tolerant phrase, be ready and glad to know that they may differ from those gained in writing it. Let us take the following :—

" Names are sometimes of more importance than is commonly supposed. Whether a particular institution should or should not be called a University seems by itself to be a very small thing. But the name has got to be associated with education of the highest type; to degrade the name of a University is therefore to degrade our highest educational ideal. That Universities should be multiplied is, within certain limits, natural and desirable : and it is by no means essential that all should conform exactly to the same pattern. It is natural and desirable again that efforts should be made to diffuse knowledge and intellectual interests among all classes by means of evening lecture?. The English Universities may well be proud of having taken the initiative in a movement of the most far-reaching social and political significance. But it would be a delusion, and a mischievous delusion, to suppose that evening lectures, however excellent and however much sup- plemented by self-education, can be the same thing as the student leisure of many years, duly prepared for by a still longer period of regular school training. Examinations, too, and private preparation for them, are an excellent thing in their proper place ; but it is a mistake to suppose that an Examining Board can discharge any but the very lowest of a University's real functions. The two most essential functions which a true University has to perform are to make possible the life of study, whether for a few years or during a whole career, and to bring together during that period, face to face in living inter- course, teacher and teacher, teacher and student, student and student."

All this may be admitted, and yet it is hardly the language of prophecy. No name can be degraded if the truth be known, as American as well as perhaps some English ex- perience has shown in this matter. What we have to do is to bring the highest possible form of education within the reach of the greatest possible number. In any great national system of higher education, that given at Oxford and Cambridge will have its proper value, probably the highest value possible, but that will only be because of what it means, not because of the name by which it is known. If association with a University in some external way or other can advantage any one in the kingdom who is trying to become better edu- cated, by all means let him have that benefit. So far from any degradation being likely to ensue, much more desirable results will follow ; credit will be given for exactly what is done, and the chance of a University education for a very much larger number, the panacea surely for many of our present discontents, will be made greater.