Medieval Religion and Thought173teed only by the papal humiliation of King John in
- John had supported the town against what he
perceived as clerical privilege, and Innocent III not only
sided with the masters but also forced the municipality
to provide an annual subsidy for impoverished students.
If the origins of Bologna were less violent, it was
because its faculty emphasized the study of law instead
of theology or the liberal arts. The students tended to
be older men of considerable influence who were adept
at securing imperial and papal privileges without knife-
play. They were also unwilling to be ruled by their
teachers. Bologna and the Italian universities based
upon its model were dominated by the students, who
hired the faculty and determined the curriculum.
As the idea of universities grew popular, a number
were founded by royal or papal edict. By 1500, Spain
and every region of Germany, including Switzerland
and the Low Countries, had its own university. Most of
them were princely foundations, while some, including
Erfurt and Cologne, were established by clerics with the
help of city governments.
Medical schools were at first unrelated to the uni-
versities and, in at least two cases, predated them.
Salerno, in the kingdom of Sicily, was a center of med-
ical studies in the eleventh century, well before the in-
troduction of Arabic learning. The interference of the
state in the person of Frederick II reduced its vitality,
and it was largely superseded by Montpellier after - Montpellier, in southern France, had been
founded before 1140 and was a center of Arabic learn-
ing from the start. It gradually evolved during the thir-
teenth century into the major university that it is today.
Other medical faculties were incorporated into univer-
sities at an early date, with Bologna and Paris achieving
particular renown.
Organizationally, the heart of Paris, Oxford, and
Cambridge was the faculty of liberal arts. The masters
of arts had secured the independence of the universi-
ties. The theologians, though important, had been
compromised by their obedience to ecclesiastical
authority. The arts curriculum included the trivium
(grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium
(geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music). Dialectic
meant the logic of Aristotle; rhetoric was largely the
science by which one could unravel figures of speech.
Those who received the master of arts were licensed to
teach these subjects.
A course of the liberal arts had to be completed be-
fore being admitted to the schools of theology, which
by midcentury were dominated by the mendicant friars.
Their curriculum was based heavily on the Sentencesof
Peter Lombard (c. 1100–60), a collection of theological
arguments and propositions that was first published
about 1150. Legal education was based on Gratian’s
Decretals.Because books were handwritten and expen-
sive, teaching methods were the essence of simplicity:
The master read the text and explained its meaning (see
illustration 9.7). Formal disputations between masters
were a welcome alternative to the lectures and often
drew large crowds.
The students were under the control of the masters,
at least in their academic lives. Both enjoyed full clerical
immunity as part of their university charters. They could
be tried only in ecclesiastical courts, even if they com-
mitted civil crimes. The university as a whole was gov-
erned by its rector who was elected for a term of no
more than three months. The only administrator in the
modern sense was the beadle, or “common servant of
the scholars,” who collected funds and tried to enforce
the regulations.
By the end of the thirteenth century, universities
had become powerful corporations whose indepen-
dence guaranteed them a certain freedom of thought.
This freedom, though not unconditional, brought a
great breadth and vigor to Western culture.Scholastic Thought
The term scholasticismis generally used to describe the
thought of the medieval universities. It was not an “ism”Illustration 9.7
A University Lecture.In this illumination from fourteenth-
century Germany, a master lectures to his class by reading from a
text and explaining its meaning. The students are of different
ages and a few are sound asleep.