A Source Book of Mediaeval History Part 41

[Sidenote: The league to be enlarged]

=18.= We decree that each city shall try to persuade each of its neighboring cities to swear to keep the peace. If they do not do so, they shall be entirely cut off from the peace, so that if any one does them an injury, either in their persons or their property, he shall not thereby break the peace.

=19.= We wish all members of the league, cities, lords, and all others, to arm themselves properly and prepare for war, so that whenever we call upon them we shall find them ready.

[Sidenote: Military preparations of the league]

=20.= We decree that the cities between the Moselle and Basel shall prepare 100 war boats, and the cities below the Moselle shall prepare 500, well equipped with bowmen, and each city shall prepare herself as well as she can and supply herself with arms for knights and foot-soldiers.

FOOTNOTES:

[470] Such guarantees of personal liberty were not peculiar to the charters of communes; they are often found in those of franchise towns.

[471] The chief magistrate of Laon was a mayor, elected by the citizens. In judicial matters he was a.s.sisted by twelve "jurats."

[472] This is intended to preserve the judicial privileges of lords of manors.

[473] The citizens of the town were to have freedom to dispose of their property as they chose.

[474] This provision was intended to put an end to arbitrary taxation by the bishop. In the earlier twelfth century serfs were subject to the arbitrary levy of the taille (tallage) and this indeed const.i.tuted one of their most grievous burdens. Arbitrary tallage was almost invariably abolished by the town charters.

[475] By "men of the peace" is meant the citizens of the commune. The term "commune" is scrupulously avoided in the charter because of its odious character in the eyes of the bishop. Suits were to be tried at home in the burgesses' own courts, to save time and expense and insure better justice.

[476] This trifling payment of sixpence a year was made in recognition of the lordship of the king, the grantor of the charter. Aside from it, the burgher had full rights over his land.

[477] The burghers, who were often engaged in agriculture as well as commerce, are to be exempt from tolls on commodities bought for their own sustenance and from the ordinary fees due the lord for each measure of grain harvested.

[478] The object of this provision is to restrict the amount of military service due the king. The burghers of small places like Lorris were farmers and traders who made poor soldiers and who were ordinarily exempted from service by their lords. The provision for Lorris practically amounted to an exemption, for such service as was permissible under chapter 3 of the charter was not worth much.

[479] The Gatinais was the region in which Lorris was situated.

etampes, Milly, and Melun all lay to the north of Lorris, in the direction of Paris. Orleans lay to the west. The king's object in granting the burghers the right to carry goods to the towns specified without payment of tolls was to encourage commercial intercourse.

[480] This protects the landed property of the burghers against the crown and crown officials. With two exceptions, fine or imprisonment, not confiscation of land, is to be the penalty for crime. _Hotes_ denotes persons receiving land from the king and under his direct protection.

[481] This provision is intended to attract merchants to Lorris by placing them under the king's protection and a.s.suring them that they would not be molested on account of old offenses.

[482] This chapter safeguards the personal property of the burghers, as chapter 5 safeguards their land. Arbitrary imposts are forbidden and any of the inhabitants who as serfs had been paying arbitrary tallage are relieved of the burden. The nominal _cens_ (Chap. 1) was to be the only regular payment due the king.

[483] An agreement outside of court was allowable in all cases except when there was a serious breach of the public peace. The provost was the chief officer of the town. He was appointed the crown and was charged chiefly with the administration of justice and the collection of revenues. All suits of the burghers were tried in his court. They had no active part in their own government, as was generally true of the franchise towns.

[484] Another part of the charter specifies that only those burghers who owned horses and carts were expected to render the king even this service.

[485] This clause, which is very common in the town charters of the twelfth century (especially in the case of towns on the royal domain) is intended to attract serfs from other regions and so to build up population. As a rule the towns were places of refuge from seigniorial oppression and the present charter undertakes to limit the time within which the lord might recover his serf who had fled to Lorris to a year and a day--except in cases where the serf should refuse to recognize the jurisdiction of the provost's court in the matter of the lord's claim.

[486] The sergeants were deputies of the provost, somewhat on the order of town constables.

[487] These "Hollanders" inhabited substantially the portion of Europe now designated by their name.

[488] This was the diocese from which the colonists proposed to remove.

[489] That is, judges representing any outside authority.

[490] In other words, if the bishop should go from his seat at Hamburg to the colony.

[491] In each parish of the colony, therefore, the priest would be supported by the income of the hide of land set apart for his use and by the tenth of the regular church t.i.thes which the bishop conceded for the purpose.

[492] All that this means is that the members of the Rhine League recognized William of Holland as emperor. Most of the Empire did not so recognize him. He died in 1256, two years after the league was formed.

[493] These "pfahlburgers" were subjects of ecclesiastical or secular princes who, in order to escape the burdens of this relation, contrived to get themselves enrolled as citizens of neighboring cities. While continuing to dwell in regions subject to the jurisdiction of their lords, they claimed to enjoy immunity from that jurisdiction, because of their citizenship in those outside cities.

The pfahlburgers were a constant source of friction between the towns and the territorial princes. The Golden Bull of Emperor Charles IV.

(1356) decreed that pfahlburgers should not enjoy the rights and privileges of the cities unless they became actual residents of them and discharged their full obligations as citizens.

CHAPTER XXI.

UNIVERSITIES AND STUDENT LIFE

The modern university is essentially a product of the Middle Ages. The Greeks and Romans had provisions for higher education, but nothing that can properly be termed universities, with faculties, courses of study, examinations, and degrees. The word "universitas" in the earlier mediaeval period was applied indiscriminately to any group or body of people, as a guild of artisans or an organization of the clergy, and only very gradually did it come to be restricted to an a.s.sociation of teachers and students--the so-called _universitas societas magistrorum discipulorumque_. The origins of mediaeval universities are, in most cases, rather obscure. In the earlier Middle Ages the interests of learning were generally in the keeping of the monks and the work of education was carried on chiefly in monastic schools, where the subjects of study were commonly the seven liberal arts inherited from Roman days.[494] By the twelfth century there was a relative decline of these monastic schools, accompanied by a marked development of cathedral schools in which not only the seven liberal arts but also new subjects like law and theology were taught. The twelfth century renaissance brought a notable revival of Roman law, medicine, astronomy, and philosophy; by 1200 the whole of Aristotle's writings had become known; and the general awakening produced immediate results in the larger numbers of students who flocked to places like Paris and Bologna where exceptional teachers were to be found.

Out of these conditions grew the earliest of the universities. No definite dates for the beginnings of Paris, Bologna, Oxford, etc., can be a.s.signed, but the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are to be considered their great formative period. Bologna was specifically the creation of the revived study of the Roman law and of the fame of the great law teacher Irnerius. The university sprang from a series of organizations effected first by the students and later by the masters, or teachers, and modeled after the guilds of workmen. It became the pattern for most of the later Italian and Spanish universities. Paris arose in a different way. It grew directly out of the great cathedral school of Notre Dame and, unlike Bologna, was an organization at the outset of masters rather than of students. It was presided over by the chancellor, who had had charge of education in the cathedral and who retained the exclusive privilege of granting licenses to teach (the _licentia docendi_), or, in other words, degrees.[495] Rising to prominence in the twelfth century, especially by virtue of the teaching of Abelard (1079-1142), Paris became in time the greatest university of the Middle Ages, exerting profound influence not only on learning, but also on the Church and even at times on political affairs. The universities of the rest of France, as well as the German universities and Oxford and Cambridge in England, were copied pretty closely after Paris.

60. Privileges Granted to Students and Masters

Throughout the Middle Ages numerous special favors were showered upon the universities and their students by the Church. Patronage and protection from the secular authorities were less to be depended on, though the courts of kings were not infrequently the rendezvous of scholars, and the greater seats of learning after the eleventh century generally owed their prosperity, if not their origin, to the liberality of monarchs such as Frederick Barbarossa or Philip Augustus. The recognition of the universities by the temporal powers came as a rule earlier than that by the Church. The edict of the Emperor Frederick I., which comprises selection (a) below, was issued in 1158 and is not to be considered as limited in its application to the students of any particular university, though many writers have a.s.sociated it solely with the University of Bologna. That the statute was decreed at the solicitation of the Bologna doctors of law admits of little doubt, but, as Rashdall observes, it was "a general privilege conferred on the student cla.s.s throughout the Lombard kingdom."[496] By some writers it is said to have been the earliest formal grant of privileges for university students, but this cannot be true as Salerno (notable chiefly for medical studies) received such grants from Robert Guiscard and his son Roger before the close of the eleventh century.

Until the year 1200 the students of Paris enjoyed no privileges such as those conferred upon the Italian inst.i.tutions by Frederick. In that year a tavern brawl occurred between some German students and Parisian townspeople, in which five of the students lost their lives. The provost of the city, instead of attempting to repress the disorder, took sides against the students and encouraged the populace. Such laxity stirred the king, Philip Augustus, to action. Fearing that the students would decamp _en ma.s.se_, he hastened to comply with their appeal for redress. The provost and his lieutenants were arrested and a decree was issued [given, in part, in selection (b)] exempting the scholars from the operation of the munic.i.p.al law in criminal cases.

Pope Innocent III. at once confirmed the privileges and on his part relaxed somewhat the vigilance of the Church. Such liberal measures, however, did not insure permanent peace. In less than three decades another conflict with the provost occurred which was so serious as to result in a total suspension of the university's activities for more than two years.

Sources--(a) Text in _Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges_ (Pertz ed.), Vol. II., p. 114. Adapted from translation by Dana C. Munro in _Univ. of Pa. Translations and Reprints_, Vol. II., No. 3, pp. 2-4.

(b) Text in _Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis_ ["Cartulary of the University of Paris"], No. 1., p. 59.

Adapted from translation in _Univ. of Pa. Translations and Reprints_, _ibid._, pp. 4-7.

[Sidenote: Security of travel and residence for scholars]

(a)

After a careful consideration of this subject by the bishops, abbots, dukes, counts, judges, and other n.o.bles of our sacred palace, we, from our piety, have granted this privilege to all scholars who travel for the sake of study, and especially to the professors of divine and sacred laws,[497] namely, that they may go in safety to the places in which the studies are carried on, both they themselves and their messengers, and may dwell there in security. For we think it fitting that, during good behavior, those should enjoy our praise and protection, by whose learning the world is enlightened to the obedience of G.o.d and of us, his ministers, and the life of the subject is molded; and by a special consideration we defend them from all injuries.

[Sidenote: Regulation concerning the collection of debts]

For who does not pity those who exile themselves through love for learning, who wear themselves out in poverty in place of riches, who expose their lives to all perils and often suffer bodily injury from the vilest men? This must be endured with vexation. Therefore, we declare by this general and perpetual law, that in the future no one shall be so rash as to venture to inflict any injury on scholars, or to occasion any loss to them on account of a debt owed by an inhabitant of their province--a thing which we have learned is sometimes done by an evil custom.[498] And let it be known to the violators of this const.i.tution, and also to those who shall at the time be the rulers of the places, that a fourfold rest.i.tution of property shall be exacted from all and that, the mark of infamy being affixed to them by the law itself, they shall lose their office forever.

[Sidenote: Judicial privileges of scholars]