practice preceded theory, the Medieval University resembles the slow development of our Peerage or Cabinet; as showing how an idea can eat out for itself—non vi sed sæpe cadendo-a permanent niche in the social fabric, it repeats the history of the Merchant Guild, or the modern Trades-Union, while a biological metaphor drawn from the law of 'protective mimicry' alone suffices to explain satisfactorily how Paris and Bologna came to be repeated, with changes suitable to the varying environments, in half-a-dozen widely differing kingdoms. 'The great man theory' is, we are told, 'played out,' but in the history of Universities it would be idle to ignore the signal services of Founders and Benefactors, whether a continuous institution such as Papacy or Empire, or the efforts of single individuals such as Charles IV. and Alphonso the Wise, or the splendid line of cultured philanthropists to whom Oxford and Cambridge almost owe their existence. From another point of view University history provides a beautiful example of the working of what Maine felicitously called 'localisation.' The absence of corporate buildings in the early stages of University development is certainly startling. Paris, Bologna, and Oxford were great educational centres, the mothers of mighty thinkers, long before they owned those picturesque structures which we regard as the outward and visible sign of learning. The University, in short, starts as an unendowed personal organization, capable of migration at a moment's notice; and indeed it is difficult to see how Paris or Bologna could have fought their way to privileged status without this weapon to menace the trade interest of a municipality or the political ambition of a Sovereign. But, as the sequel shows, the acquisition of University buildings was as significant a revolution in University history as the transmutation of the blood-tie into the land-tie is in the case of a tribe.

It is no contradiction of these conclusions to maintain that some Universities-Paris, Bologna, Oxford-were born great, the hour and the man combining; that some-Cambridge, Montpellier, Angers, Leipsic-achieved greatness; and that some-Prague, Salamanca, Vienna-had greatness thrust upon them, a few, like Naples, proving unequal to the burden. Even after so many centuries, we cannot determine the causes of success or failure with absolute precision; and the mediæval mind which saw a miraculous element in the complex organization of the European Universities was only expressing in its own language what we are compelled to admit to-day, that in the march of thought and its influence on action there are elements which defy analysis.

As

As to the educational value of the Medieval University— the aspect which probably interests most the so-called 'practical' man—it is virtually impossible to arrive at a definite decision. For, in estimating the value of an educational system, we are confronted by the same difficulty that the historical economist has to face when he attempts to appreciate the worth of an economic fabric which has long since disappeared. Everything depends on the test which is applied. Is the criterion to be historical or absolute? Is the standard of value to be simply that of the age itself, varying with the fluctuating forces of supply and demand, of needs and the necessity of satisfying them; or is it to be a standard corrected and modified by several centuries of development? Happily Mr. Rashdall partly solves the problem, and some of his concluding remarks are so appropriate from both these points of view that we cannot forbear the pleasure of quoting them.

'In view of current misconceptions,' he writes,' as to the "religious" character of the medieval Universities, it may not be amiss to point out how little "religious education" the medieval University supplied for the future Priest. Except in so far as it taught him to construe his Breviary and qualified him to read a provincial constitution or an episcopal mandate in Latin, there was no relation between the studies of the Artist and the work of the ecclesiastical order. .. The poorer students must have usually left the University with a degree in Arts or no degree at all, and consequently without even the rudiments of a theological education... The "religious education" of a "bygone Oxford," in so far as it ever had any existence, was an inheritance not from the Middle Ages but from the Reformation . . . It may be doubted whether it could be shown that anyone in medieval times was ever refused ordination, much less degraded when already ordained, for any degree of religious or theological ignorance which was not incompatible with ability to say Mass. To the modern student, the defects of a medieval education lie upon the surface. . . . In the older University system of northern Europe there is the want of selection and consequent incompetency of the teachers, and the excessive youth of the students in Arts. In the higher Faculties too we have encountered the constant effort on the part of the Doctors to evade the obligation of teaching without surrendering its emoluments, while the real teaching devolved upon half-trained Bachelors . . . There is considerable reason to believe that in the Middle Ages a larger proportion than at the present day of the nominal students derived exceedingly little benefit from their University education. . . . For the fairly competent student the main defects may be summed up by saying that it was at once too dogmatic and too disputatious. . . The readiness with which the student was encouraged to dispute the thesis of a prescribed opponent, and the readiness with which he would

swear to teach only the system of a prescribed authority, were but opposite sides of the same fundamental defect-the same fatal indifference to facts, the facts of external nature, the facts of history, and the facts of life. Books were put in the place of things. This is a defect which was certainly not removed by the mere substitution of Classics for Philosophy. If in medieval times words were often allowed to usurp the places of things, they were not allowed to usurp the place of thought. . If in the Scholastic age the human mind did not advance, even Macaulay admits that it did at least mark time. . . As a practical training in readiness and facility of expression, the habit of disputation may have been quite as valuable an exercise as the practice of construing and composition, though the dialect acquired was different enough . . . The intelligent modern artisan educated at a Board-school or the half-educated man of the world possesses at the present day a great deal more true and useful knowledge than a medieval Doctor of Divinity. But it can on no account be admitted that this puts the uneducated man of modern times on a level with the educated man of the Middle Ages. And the educated man-the man who has spent many of his maturer years in subtle and laborious intellectual work-will generally show his superiority to the uneducated man even in the most severely practical affairs of life. . . . The rapid multiplication of Universities during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was largely due to a direct demand for highly educated lawyers and administrators. In a sense the academic discipline of the Middle Ages was too practical. It trained pure intellect, encouraged habits of laborious subtlety, heroic industry, and intense application, while it left uncultivated the imagination, the taste, the sense of beauty-in a word, all the amenities and refinements of the civilized intellect. It taught men to think and to work rather than to enjoy... On the speculative side the Universities taught men... to find a pleasure in the things of the intellect, both for their own sake and for the sake of their applications to life. Their greatest service to mankind was simply this, that they placed the administration of human affairs-in short, the government of the world-in the hands of educated men. The actual rulers . . . had to rule through the instrumentality of a highly educated class.'

These are thoughtful and wise conclusions, and they are probably as much as can be asserted with any certainty. To pursue the subject further, interesting as such a discussion would be, would inevitably lead into topics highly controversial in themselves and not really relevant to a historical sketch. And, after all, the final justification for the study of the Mediæval University must be found in the aid that it supplies to the inquirer towards understanding and appreciating aright the historical phenomena and institutions of the Middle Ages. It is no exaggeration to say that it is only by sympathetically investigating the functions and theory of the Universities that

any

any true insight into the position of the other great elements in the fabric of mediæval society can be successfully obtained.

Take, for example, the Papacy. What a flood of light is thrown on its policy and character by its connexion with the University movement! When we see it at the outset smiling on the educational revolutionaries and dandling their organization into vigorous life by generous grants of privileges, not without considerable benefit at the same time to the sacred cause' of clerical immunity, posing as the patron of their learning, carefully nursing at first the important Theological Faculty as a monopoly for two or three pet daughters of the Church, gently insisting on becoming the depositary for all academic Rolls, so that appointments may be equitably 'provided,' now turning the Canonists to account and now the Mendicant orders, bestowing charters or threatening excommunications -no question, in short, being too big or too small for its august notice then we can appreciate how for medieval Christendom it was the Tribunal of International Law, the Final Court of Appeal, over all causes, ecclesiastical as civil, supreme. We can understand how, in its unerring sagacity for the doctrines with the greatest future, its authoritative opportunism, its hereditary capacity to lead the big battalions of thought, always old and always new, it is the Zeitgeist in a tiara'd cowl. So, too, if we would perceive how the bishop's crozier could lie in the wallet of a humble clerk,' we must turn to the University history of the Regulars and measure the significance of the Friars' orders; we must put the growth of Faculties and Colleges under the microscope.

If it is our object to trace the moulding of the Catholic faith from Anselm to Aquinas, or piece together an educational curriculum, or, may be, illustrate from the careers of Abelard, Averroism, Scotism, Huss, and Wyclif, what fierce forces of 'higher criticism' and intellectual revolt seethed continually beneath the apparently unruffled surface of mediæval orthodoxy, it is to the annals of Paris, Oxford, and Prague that we must look. The thirteenth-century University was a COSmopolitan institution. The common use of Latin, the flitting of students from one centre to another, the habit of famous teachers to give their services to more than one University, put Paris, Oxford, Bologna, Prague, into even closer mental relationship than in these days of penny newspapers and telephones. Je prends mon bien où je le trouve had been the motto of a John of Salisbury, and in the thirteenth century there were many such student free lances roaming from studium to studium, seeking what they might devour. The secret of University

University extension was certainly not unknown, but it was the extension of University to University. Presently, however, as the epochs succeed one another, we detect the steady crystallization of that set of ideas which we sum up as Nationalism. At Paris, Oxford, Prague, Salamanca, the force of the conception marches step by step with the evolution of vertebrate, centralized, self-conscious kingdoms; the political investigator can trace its development in brawls between North and South, Teuton and Czech, the hostility of a Theological Faculty to a puppet Pope, in the rise of vulgarisantes trying to talk their national tongue, quite as much as in Acts of Præmunire, Concordats, or Wars of a Hundred Years.

Here we must end. It is useless to hope that Mr. Rashdall will continue his task, and give us on the same scale a history of Universities down to our own day, for such a work is beyond the power of any one man, as history is written to-day. But may we not look for a historian who, now that the story of the Oxford of the Heroic age has been chronicled, will be stimulated to describe in like fashion the Oxford of the New Learning,' of Laud and the Commonwealth, of Wood and Hearne, of Johnson, Gibbon, and Shelley, perhaps even the Oxford of Newman and Pusey, Pattison and Conington, Stanley and Jowett? Assuredly such a historian's task has not been made an easy one; for he will be expected to show the insight into institutional evolution and the high ideal of unfaltering industry and breadth of view that are so conspicuous in Mr. Rashdall's volumes.

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