How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity (28 page)

The first university was founded in Bologna, in northern Italy, in about 1088—just after the Norman invasion of England and just before the First Crusade. Next came the University of Paris in about 1150, Oxford ca. 1167, Palencia ca. 1208, and Cambridge ca. 1209. Twenty-four others followed before the end of the fourteenth century, and at least twenty-eight more opened during the following century, including one as far north as Uppsala in Sweden (in 1477).

These new institutions distinguished themselves by not limiting their scholarly work to reciting the received wisdom. Instead, the Scholastics who founded universities esteemed innovation. Marcia L. Colish’s description is enlightening:

They [the Scholastic faculty] reviewed past authorities and current opinions, giving [their] analysis of them and [their] reasons for rejecting some and accepting others. Altogether, the methodology already in place by the early twelfth century shows the scholastics’ willingness, and readiness, to criticize the foundation documents in their respective fields. More than simply receiving
and expanding on the classical and Christian traditions, they set aside ideas of those traditions deemed to have outlived their usefulness. They also freely realigned the authorities they retained to defend positions that those authorities might well have thought strange and novel. [Commentaries] were now rarely mere summaries and explications of their author’s views. Scholastic commentators were much more likely to take issue with their chosen author or to bring to bear on his work ideas from emerging schools of thought or the scholastics own opinions.
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Of crucial importance, the great medieval universities were dominated by empiricism from the start.
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If it was possible to put an intellectual claim to observational tests, then that was what should be done. Nowhere was the Scholastic commitment to empiricism more fully displayed than in the study of human physiology. It was the Scholastics, not the Greeks, Romans, Muslims, or Chinese, who based their studies on human dissection.
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During classical times the dignity of the human body had forbidden dissection,
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which is why Greco-Roman works on anatomy are so faulty. Aristotle’s studies were limited to animal dissections, as were those of Celsius and Galen. Human dissection was also prohibited in Islam. But with the founding of Christian universities came a new outlook on dissection. This new outlook was predicated on the assumption that what was unique to humans was a soul, not a body, meaning that dissections had no theological implications. Further, adequate medical knowledge required direct observation of human anatomy. In any case, too many murderers had escaped detection because the bodies of their victims had not been subjected to careful postmortems.

In the thirteenth century, local officials (especially in Italian university towns) began to authorize postmortems in instances when the cause of death was uncertain. Late in the century, Mondino de’ Luzzi (1270–1326) wrote a textbook on dissection, based on his study of two female cadavers.
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Then, in about 1315, he performed a human dissection in front of an audience of students and faculty at the University of Bologna. From there, human dissection spread rapidly through the Italian universities—given added impetus by the calamity of the Black Death. Public dissections began in Spain in 1391, and the first one in Vienna was conducted in 1404.
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Dissection became a customary part of anatomy
classes. As Edward Grant observed, the “introduction [of human dissection] in the Latin west, made without serious objection from the Church, was a momentous occurrence.”
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The rise of human dissections reflected the autonomy of medieval universities. As Nathan Schachner explained:

The university was the darling, the spoiled child of the Papacy and Empire, of king and municipality alike. Privileges were showered on the proud Universities in a continuous golden stream; privileges that had no counterpart, then, before, or since. Not even the sacred hierarchies of the Church had quite the exemptions of the poorest begging scholar who could claim protection of a University. Municipalities competed violently for the honour of housing one within their walls; kings wrote siren letters to entice discontented groups of scholars from the domains of their rivals; Popes intervened with menacing language to compel royalty to respect the inviolability of this favoured institution.
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The faculty benefited from this privileged status. Despite slow transportation and limited means of communication, scholars moved from one university to another amazingly often. They could do so because language barriers were not a problem: all instruction, everywhere, was in Latin. Then, as today, one gained fame and invitations to join other faculties by
innovation
. It was not who knew Aristotle word for word, but who had found errors in Aristotle. As William of Auvergne (1180–1249), a professor of theology at the University of Paris, put it: “Let it not enter your mind that I want to use the words of Aristotle as authoritative for the proof of things I am about to say, for I know that a proof from an authority is only dialectical and can only produce belief, though it is my aim, both in this treatise and whenever I can, to produce demonstrative certitude.”
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Even better was to have discovered something unknown to the classical world.

So much, then, for the claims that Scholastics merely recited dogma or debated theological minutiae.

Cradle of Learning: The University of Paris

For all the dozens of universities that flourished in the Middle Ages, by far the most important, both as a model for the others and for the achievements of its faculty, was the University of Paris.

This university quickly became the largest and most prestigious institution of higher learning in Europe, at least partly because of the attractions of the city itself. Even then, Paris had a reputation as a sophisticated and beautiful city, very large for that era, having a population of about a hundred thousand in 1200.
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As the capital of France, it also featured a dazzling court and the excitement inherent in constant intrigues and affairs of both heart and state.
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The roster of University of Paris graduates and faculty stands as a glittering array of the most famous medieval intellectuals. While the university was still the cathedral school of Notre-Dame de Paris, the almost legendary Peter Abelard (1079–1142) was a student and later held the chair in natural philosophy. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the most admired of medieval scholars, served as regent master of theology at the university. Later graduates included Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556) and John Calvin (1509–1564). And, as will be seen, most of the great natural philosophers who took part in the Copernican “Revolution” were associated with the University of Paris.

Students

Many readers will suppose that medieval universities were quite small, consisting of a few masters and, perhaps, a hundred students. In fact, by the year 1200, only fifty years after its founding, the University of Paris is estimated to have had from 2,500 to 5,000 students and several hundred faculty.
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Many of these students came from far away, even from Scandinavia. In 1167—the year Oxford was founded—King Henry II prohibited English students from attending the University of Paris. Shortly thereafter the ban was lifted, and thus began several centuries of close connections between Oxford and Paris.

Students were very young, most entering at age fourteen or fifteen. Keep in mind that back then, the world was run mostly by young men, life expectancy being rather short. Most students, observed the historian Hastings Rashdall, “were of a social position intermediate between the highest and the very lowest—sons of knights and yeomen, merchants,
tradesmen or thrifty artisans.”
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Still, a surprising number of students were impoverished; some even received permission from the chancellor to beg door-to-door. To give alms to a student beggar “was recognized as a work of charity in the medieval world,” Rashdall noted.
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The area surrounding the University of Paris came to be known as the Latin Quarter—a name that persists today. This was because students were encouraged to speak only in Latin, in and out of class. Nevertheless, few students had real fluency in Latin. (Neither did most clergy, from parish priests to cardinals.)
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Such deficiencies in Latin were not usually a serious problem, because, as Grant pointed out, “most of the students at medieval universities departed after two years or less without acquiring a bachelor’s degree.”
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For most students, it was enough simply to have been at university.

It wasn’t only in Latin that most undergraduate students failed to live up to the faculty’s high standards. Recalling his days as a student in Paris from about 1205 to 1210, Cardinal Jacques de Vitry wrote: “Simple fornication was held to be no sin. Everywhere, publicly, close to their brothels, prostitutes attracted the students who were walking by on the streets and squares of the city with immodest and aggressive invitations.”
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It was, of course, against regulations for students to accept such invitations. But many students flouted those and other rules, not only bedding prostitutes but also being rowdy and drinking too much.
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This dissolute, sometimes even criminal behavior had an amazing result: it gave the university complete independence from local authorities. Here is how it happened.

Gaining “Academic Freedom”

In March 1229, at the start of the pre-Lenten Carnival—which was much like a modern Mardi Gras, complete with masks and uninhibited behavior—a group of University of Paris students became embroiled in a conflict with a tavern owner over their bill. A fight broke out, other patrons supported the owner, and the students were beaten and thrown into the street. The next day the students returned with reinforcements and clubs, broke into the tavern, beat the owner and patrons, smashed everything, and then rioted in the streets.

City officials demanded punishment. University officials took shelter in the exemption of the Church from local courts, since the university was a religious institution. But Blanche of Castile, the mother of
Louis IX who was then serving as regent of France, demanded retribution. The university then allowed the city to take action against the students. Unfortunately, the city guardsmen picked out a group of students who had not taken part in the riot and even killed several of them.

The university went on strike. Faculty refused to teach and all classes were canceled. Many students went home; some went to other universities, including Oxford and Cambridge.
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The strike caused a severe economic pinch in Paris.

After two years, Pope Gregory IX, himself a graduate of the university, issued a bull that guaranteed the institution total freedom from local authorities—including ecclesiastical leaders—by placing it directly under papal patronage and control. The university thus had the right to establish its own rules and statutes, as well as the exclusive right to punish violations. Even criminal cases brought against faculty and students could be heard only in an ecclesiastical, not a civil, court. The pope’s bull became the university’s charter, which, in turn, served as the model for other new universities.

In addition to granting the ecclesiastical exemption from civil authorities, the charter placed all power in the hands of the faculty. They decided whom to admit to their ranks and whom to dismiss. Summed up in two words, the university enjoyed virtually unlimited “academic freedom.”

Curriculum

The curriculum was similar throughout medieval universities. At the undergraduate level, it consisted of the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, and logic formed the trivium; arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music made up the quadrivium. Under the appropriate art, students studied the Latin classics, the astronomy of Ptolemy, the complete works of Euclid, and Aristotelian logic—the last of which, according to the historian Charles Homer Haskins, formed “the backbone of the arts course.” The prominence of logic made perfect sense, for it “was not only a major subject of study itself, it pervaded every other subject as a method and gave tone and character to the medieval mind.”
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The graduate level of studies was organized into four divisions: theology, law, medicine, and natural philosophy. There were, Haskins noted, “relatively few students of theology.”
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Several reasons explained the dearth of theology students: theological training was not required for the priesthood; many monastic orders offered their own instruction; it took a
long time to complete the work for an advanced degree; the books—still copied by hand—were expensive; and the anticipated income was low compared with what one could earn from medicine or law.
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Faculty

As is true today, most university students were not very serious about learning, let alone playing any role in the pursuit of knowledge. That was the domain of some advanced graduate students but primarily of the faculty. “Publish or perish,” however, had not yet come into vogue. Consequently, only dedicated scholars with something to say devoted time to the pursuit of new knowledge (and the world was spared the flood of trivia churned out by careerist faculty in modern times).

Teaching was the primary faculty obligation. The great Scholastic scholars held classes every day during the school year. They usually lectured to large groups of students, often dictating from books because texts were so scarce and expensive in the days before the printing press.