Part 12 (2/2)

[Footnote 46: For the text of this charter in full, see DC Munro, _lc_ p 7]

[Footnote 47: Matthew Paris, _Chronica Majora_, III, 166-169]

[Footnote 48: _Chart Univ Paris_, I, p 119]

[Footnote 49: Kashdall, I, pp 11, 12]

[Footnote 50: _Chart Univ Paris_, II, No 578]

[Footnote 51: Documents printed by Denifle, _Die Universitaten, _etc, pp 801-803]

[Footnote 52: Document printed by Rashdall, II, Pt II, p 746]

[Footnote 53: Charter of Harvard College, 1650]

[Footnote 54: Charter of Brown University, 1764]

[Footnote 55: See Compayre, ”Abelard,” pp 41-45, and 35-41]

[Footnote 56: Fournier, _Statuts_, etc, III, No 1644]

IV

UNIVERSITY EXERCISES

The ways andin mediaeval universities were few and simple in comparison with those of our own times The task of the student was merely to become acquainted with a few books and to acquire some facility in debate The university exercises were shaped to secure this result They consisted in the Lecture, the Disputation or Debate, the Repetition, the Conference, the Quiz, and the Examination

Of these the first two and the last were by far the most important; they are described in detail below The Repetition, given in the afternoon or evening, was either a detailed discussion of some point which could not be treated in full in the ”ordinary” lecture, or a si of the lecture, sometimes accompanied by catechism of the students upon its substance The Conference was an informal discussion between professor and students at the close of a lecture, or a discussion of some portion of the day's work by students alone The Quiz was often held in the afternoon at the student's hall or college, by the e 132

(a) _The Lecture_

Lectures were of two kinds,--”ordinary,” and ”extraordinary” or ”cursory” The for, by professors; the latter in the afternoon, either by professors or by students about to take a bachelor's degree

The purpose of the lecture was to read and explain the text of the book or books of the course The character of the lecture was largely determined by the fact that all text-books, practically to the year 1500, were in manuscript, and by the further fact thatto purchase or hire copies A large part of the lecturer's time was thus consu aloud the standard text and coht add his own explanations; but the siently was sufficient to qualify a properly licensed Master, or a Bachelor preparing to take the Master's degree, to lecture on a given subject This accounts for the fact that youths of seventeen or eighteen ular courses were given by those not much over twenty-one

The books thus read consisted of two parts,--the text, and the ”glosses”

or coe 60 will reveal the nature of the latter: they were summaries, explanations, controversial notes, and cross-references, written by in of the text In the course of generations the reat as fairly to sinal work The selection just referred to is not especially prolific in glosses; cases e occupies only three or four lines, the rest of the space being completely filled with comments, and with explanations of the comments Instances of books explained to death are not unknown in our own class-rooms!

The effect of this accumulation of comments was to draw the attention of both teachers and students more and more away from the text There is evidence that in solected in the attelosses University refor of the sixteenth century sometimes involved the exclusion of this mass of ”frivolous and obscure” comment from the lectures, and a return to the study of the text itself See the introduction to the plan of studies for Leipzig, p 48

The selection froood idea of the substance of a dictated inal” andaccount of Giraldus Ca of all autobiographies” After recounting--in the third person--his studies at Paris in Civil and Canon Law, and Theology, he says:

He obtained so much favor in decretal cases, which ont to be handled Sundays, that, on the day on which it had becohout the city that he would talk, there resulted such a concourse of al voice, that scarcely could the amplest house have held the auditors

And with reason, for he so supported with rhetorical persuasiveness his original, wide-awake treatment of the Laws and Canons, and so eures and flowers of speech and with pithy ideas, and so applied the sayings of philosophers and authors, which he inserted in fitting places with marvellous cleverness, that the erly and attentively did they apply ears andOf a truth they were led on and bes, as it were, in suspense on the lips of the speaker,--though the address was long and involved, of a sort that is wont to be tedious to ued, or even sated, with hearing the man