Chapter 31 - From School to University

Summary

In this field admirable pioneer work was done by the late A. F. Leach, in his Schools of Medieval England and elsewhere; and we have Hastings Rashdall's monumental Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, of which an edition has been published since his death, revised, corrected, and very fully annotated by Professor Powicke and Principal Emden. The reader who cannot find time for this three-volume monograph will find compendious essays, clear and trustworthy, by Rashdall and Professor G. R. Potter in The Cambridge Medieval History. “In England, from the first,” writes Leach, “education was the creature of religion; the school was an adjunct of the Church, and the schoolmaster was an ecclesiastical officer. For close on eleven hundred years, from 598 to 1670, all educational institutions were under exclusively ecclesiastical control. The law of education was a branch of the Canon Law. The Church courts had exclusive jurisdiction over schools and universities and colleges, and until 1540 all schoolmasters and scholars were clerks, or clerics or clergy, and in Orders, though not necessarily holy Orders.” So definitely was this the case, that at an eminent grammar school like Canterbury the master had even the terrible weapon of excommunication at his disposal, as decreed by Canon Law against anyone who should assault a cleric. In 1314, “Thomas of Birchwood, scholar of the said school, being summoned ex officio for many delinquencies against the law of the aforesaid school, viz. hindering the vicemonitor and his scholars from their public teaching, and also for a violent assault on Master Walter, the vice-monitor, appeared and was sworn, and confessed that he had violently assaulted the said Walter”.