Chapter 3 - The North–South Divide in the Medieval English Universities

Summary

Chapter 3 examines the phenomenon of “nations” at the medieval English universities, that is, the means by which students were segregated as northern or southern within the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge (determined by whether they hailed from North or South of the Trent), and these distinctions of provenance were based on the models at Bologna and Paris. This chapter demonstrates several instances of marked violence between the “nations” at Oxford and Cambridge, focusing primarily on the Stamford Schism of the early-1330s wherein several northern students fled Oxford, under persecution, for a studium at Stamford (Lincolnshire) where they engaged an extant learning community. King Edward III recognized the threat posed to England’s universities by such flight and he moved quickly to settle the matter. The intense rivalries in the Schism are evident in two overlooked Latin poems written by students during the conflict, which this chapter analyses. The proceeding years of negotiation to end the Schism illustrate the importance of the universities to England’s burgeoning nationalism and, thus, the role that the North–South divide played in it.