disputations and public ceremonies; inception functioned as the examination for master in
the faculty of arts.
A student who qualified to teach in the faculties of law, medicine, or theology at Paris
was known as a “doctor.” In law and medicine, candidates typically would have been
about twenty-five years old; the age for incepting in theology was thirty-five. Although
master and doctor designate a person who has demonstrated a level of competency
worthy of a license to teach, in practice few graduates of the university taught for long.
The world outside the university also acknowledged the value of the learning certified by
these titles, and graduates continued to claim their status as masters and doctors long after
leaving academic life.
As part of its control of the academic environment, the University of Paris claimed the
right to regulate the book trade as well as the price of classroom rentals and tuition. The
university’s objective was both to control prices and to certify the accuracy of texts.
University stationers had official copies of works, whose sections, however, had not been
bound into a codex; copyists then worked from these sections, known as pecia, to
produce multiple copies.Using this method, several copyists could work together to
reproduce a book quickly; indeed, one reason for the ascendancy of Gothic script was the
fact that Gothic tended to be more uniform from one scribe to another. Students could
also borrow pecia rather than an entire book. Both the wages of the copyists and the fees
charged by the stationers were regulated by the university, although the stationers did not
always comply completely or happily.
Also having roots in the 12th century, the University of Montpellier originally
centered on medicine, which may have been taught there before 1150.In 1220, a papal
legate confirmed university statutes for the universitas medicorum. Law had also been
taught at Montpellier in the 12th century, most notably by the great Italian jurist
Placentinus, and legal teaching was firmly established by the second third of the 13th
century. A collection of statutes for the faculty of arts dates from 1242. Formal
acknowledgment that the schools at Montpellier constituted a studium generale came
from Pope Nicholas IV in 1289.
By the 13th century, there was a concept of studium, or university, that was
sufficiently well defined to permit the founding of new universities as deliberate acts. The
University of Toulouse was founded in 1229, by treaty between the king of France and
the count of Toulouse, as part of the settlement of the Albigensian heresy. The count
promised to pay the salaries of fourteen professors—four in theology, two in canon law,
six in the arts, and two in grammar. The idea clearly was to promote the teaching of
orthodox learning as a way to counter heretical doctrines. An effort was made to attract
doctors from Paris to staff the new university, but when the count reneged on the salaries
he had promised the studium quickly foundered. At this point, however, the pope
intervened with a bull guaranteeing the privileges of the masters, and the university
seems to have been functioning successfully by the 1240s.
Other, smaller studia can also be documented for the 13th century, and there was a
continuous string of foundations in the 14th and 15th centuries, often under the
sponsorship of the local bishop. Having a university could be a matter of local pride, and
successions of masters from existing universities could provide recruits out of which
faculties could be formed. Most of these universities were small compared with Paris,
however, and many offered training only or mainly in law. This was a field that saw a
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1778