CHAPTER II.

LEGISTS-ST. ALDATE'S CHURCH.

FROM a very early period a number of hostels for students of law, owned for the most part by religious houses, were clustered round St. Aldate's Church. The principal of these, whether called Segrym's or Broadgates Hall, was an appendage of St. Frideswyde's Priory, the original cradle of the University of Oxford. Founded as a nunnery in the eighth century, 'St. Frids' was broken up in the Danish wars, and the buildings, after some vicissitudes of occupation by regulars and seculars (the latter described by William of Malmesbury as clerks'), were assigned in Henry I's reign to a priory of Austin Canons ('canonists' Huber calls them) placed there by Roger Bishop of Sarum. Hutten says that the place had been given by the Conqueror to the Abingdon monks, but they, perceiving it to be ruinous, gave it to Roger. In these quiet cloisters and those of Oseney Abbey, founded as an offshoot of St. Frideswyde's in 1129, we shall find the earliest Oxford schools, though neither house, Mr. Lyte remarks, ever attained great celebrity as a place of education. Here Thibaut d'Estampes taught secular studies' about 1118, and in 1133 Robert Pullein came from Paris and lectured in the Holy Scriptures. Another Biblical scholar was Robert of Cricklade, Prior of St. Frideswyde's. But arts and theology had a powerful rival at hand. The tradition of the famous law schools of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus had never quite disappeared2, and was now to be quickened into new life by an accident and by the needs of an age in

1 Huber supposes they were clerks united again after the storms of the Conquest for fresh scholastic activity; and be asks, was this a regular college even before A. D. IIII?

2 In 804 a school at York is described by Alcuin, where instruction was given not only in grammar and rhetoric, but also in law. A century earlier St. Bonitus of Auvergne is said to have been 'grammaticorum imbutus initiis, necnon Theodosii edoctus decretis.' Lanfranc, born at Pavia A.D. 1089, is described as 'ab annis puerilibus eruditus in scholis liberalium artium et legum secularium ad suae morem patriae.'

STUDY OF CIVIL LAW.

15

which the priesthood was no longer the only profession needing special training, and the knowledge of law, kept alive in dark ages by the clergy, was henceforth to have separate students and professors. About the year 1135 the Justinian Pandects were discovered at Amalfi. In 1149 a master from Lombardy, Vacarius, came with other civilians and a library of law books to decide the controversies between Archbishop Theobald and Bishop Henry de Blois, the pope's legate, into whose place Theobald had been put through the influence of Beket, himself a student of law at Bologna. Arriving in Oxford Vacarius introduced the study of Roman jurisprudence to crowded lecture rooms. King Stephen, jealous of Italian influences and of the supplanting of the ancient customs of Church and Realm by a foreign code, silenced him and forbade the possession of books on civil law. At Paris also it was suppressed. But the new learning was spreading rapidly over Europe, and having crossed the narrow seas was not easily expelled. In days when clerks everywhere formed one great guild, and when though there were no conveniences there was much hunger for learning, ideas ran from land to land like wildfire. To reverse Adam Smith's saying, a scholar was then of all kinds of luggage the easiest to be transported. The tendency of things moreover, both in Church and State, was towards codification and centralization. In England, Stephen's successors, especially Edward I, were attracted by the unifying and imperialist ideas of the Roman system. The Church, after the publication in 1140 of Gratian's Decretals, discovered that the civil might be made ancillary to the canon law. By the end of the twelfth century the civil law was dominant at Oxford, and Vacarius' suppressed work, the Liber Pauperum, had become the leading text-book of the University, giving to the students of law their name of Pauperists.

The extent to which this study had encroached on divinity and the seven liberal arts is illustrated by the history of Emo, afterwards Abbot of Bloomkap, and his brother Addo, two young Frisians, who after 'hearing and glossing' at Paris and Orleans came in 1190 to Oxford, eager to apply themselves to the 'studium commune litterarum.' This consisted of the Trivium (grammar, logic and rhetoric) and the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). They were however quickly convinced that a knowledge of Roman law would be more to their advantage, or, as we should say in modern educational parlance, would pay best. Our examination statutes, like an ever-changing cloud, shift and melt and elude the clasp. But that simpler time also had its fashions and experiments, its discarded ideals

16

EXPELS ALL OTHERS.

and new favourites. Emo and Addo 'took up' civil law. The Mathematical Faculty has calculated that there are now four thousand different ways of achieving that degree which entitles the possessor to teach mankind as Master. These brothers had a more restricted choice of books. After hearing lectures they copied out their notes and made extracts from the Decretum and the Liber Pauperum, Addo during the former part of the night, Emo during the latter—an arrangement which, as Prof. Holland observes, had the advantage of making one truckle-bed suffice for both. Ten years earlier Daniel of Morley, in Norfolk, after studying in Paris and Toledo, returned with a priceless multitude of books,' but was chagrined to find Aristotle and Plato superseded by Titius and Seius, the John Doe and Richard Roe of Roman law. However, not to remain the only Grecian among Romans, he halted at Oxford to pick up the fashionable science. Giraldus too, though he calls Oxford the place where the English clergy most excelled in clerkly lore, complains of the desertion of 'bonae litterae ' The haste with which the legists leapt from a rapid study of the Institutes to the Digests and the Code was also deplored by many. Roger Bacon declared that the Civil Law corrupted the study of philosophy. It was said that the Sibylline prophecy, 'venient dies, et vae illis, in quibus leges obliterabunt scientiam litterarum,' was being fulfilled. A clerk named Martin, who had himself studied law at Bologna, loudly reproved the Masters assembled in public, in that 'the Imperial laws had choked every other science;' again, the Archbishop on a public occasion blundering in his Latin, the same 'merry blade' stopped the hum that went round by crying, 'Why do ye murmur? Grammar is out of date.' The civilians were indeed the spoiled children of Alma Mater. In 1268 'the inceptors in civil law were so numerous, and attended by such a number of guests, that the academical houses or hostels were not sufficient for their accommodation, and the company filled not only these, but even the refectory, cloisters, and many apartments of Oseney Abbey. At which time many Italians studying at Oxford were admitted in that faculty.' 'The study of law,' writes. Mr. Green,' was the one source of promotion, whether in Church or State.' A century later the legists refused to be subjected to statutes

Wood says that there was then a threefold division of clerks into superseminati, ill-grounded and superficial, pannosi, patchy scholars, and massati, 'who built an unshaken edifice upon the solid foundation of literature, as well of the divine as human law, and other faculties.' But owing to the discouragement of everything but jurisprudence the last class were 'very few and rare.'

LAW SCHOOL IN ST. ALDATE'S CHURCH. 17

made by artists' and theologists, though the claim of Bachelors of Civil Law and of the Decrees to be styled Master, and their appeal to the 'foreign court' of the Arches, were unsuccessful.

The law students were but slightly connected with the religious houses, though a knowledge of civil law had come to be an indispensable part of the training of a canonist, and divinity was reputed bare without it'. Indeed the canon law tended everywhere but in Paris, where the theologists were strong, to become an appendage thereto. Still, as Bishop Kennet observes, 'it was then customary for the Religious to have schools that bore the name of their respective order;' and belonging to the Priory, round which—as the great church of the Patroness of Oxford-a multitude of inns had grown up, were the Schools of St. Frideswyde' in or near Schools Street, and 'Civil Law' or 'Great Civil Law School' in St. Edward's parish. The centre of the hostels for jurists outside the west gate of the Priory was a Law School in St. Aldate's Church. It is true that the interesting

1 I quote the following from Mr. Ruskin's description of Simone Memmi's frescoes in Santa Maria Novella (Mornings in Florence. The Strait Gate, p. 144). First of the Seven Heavenly Sciences is :

'I. CIVIL LAW. Civil, or " of citizens," not only as distinguished from Ecclesiastical, but from local law. She is the universal Justice of the peaceful relations of men throughout the world, therefore holds the globe, with its three quarters, white, as being justly governed, in her left hand.

She is also the law of eternal equity, not of erring statute; therefore holds her sword level across her breast.

She is the foundation of all other divine science. To know anything whatever about God you must begin by being Just.

Dressed in red, which in these frescoes is always a sign of power, or zeal; but her face very calm, gentle, and beautiful. Her hair bound close, and crowned by the royal circlet of gold, with pure thirteenth-century strawberry leaf ornament.

Under her, the Emperor Justinian, in blue, with conical mitre of white and gold; the face in profile, very beautiful. The imperial staff in his right hand, the Institutes in his left.

Medallion, a figure apparently in distress, appealing for justice. (Trajan's suppliant widow ?).

Technical points:—The three divisions of the globe in her hand were originally inscribed ASIA, AFRICA, EUROPE. The restorer has ingeniously changed AF into AME-RICA.

II. CHRISTIAN LAW. After the justice which rules men, comes that which rules the Church of Christ. The distinction is not between secular law and ecclesiastical authority, but between the rough equity of humanity, and the discriminate compassion of Christian discipline.

In full, straight-falling, golden robe, with white mantle over it; a church in her left hand; her right raised, with the forefinger lifted... Head-dress, a white veil floating into folds in the air . . .

Beneath, Pope Clement V, in red... Note the strict level of the book, and the vertical directness of the key.'

C

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THE CHAPEL OF THE LEGISTS.

chamber afterwards used for this purpose and as a library of law books, over the south aisle, was a late Perpendicular erection. But it is most unlikely that a civil law school should be built in a parish church as late as Henry VII or Henry VIII', unless there had been one there before. Wood says that it was 'anciently' so used, being frequented by the students belonging to the Halls of Broadgate, Beef, Wolstan, Bole, Moyses, &c.' The numerous legists of this quarter had no other centre of teaching. Huber says (§ 69) that even in the fifteenth century the Masters assembled their forms in the porches of houses and churches, the conventual schools alone having good lecture rooms.

The chamber in St. Aldate's is described in the churchwardens' accounts, 26 Hen. VIII, as 'ye library,' being rented at 26s. 8d. p. ã.'3 'When the University was in a manner left desolate in the reign of K. Edw. VI. the said School went to ruin and the books were lost.' Church law-books were not likely to survive the other 'cobwebs' of medieval knowledge swept away by the Visitors. After the foundation of Pembroke the room was again furnished with books and was used as the College library until the year 1709, the College executing the repairs, as also of the chapel below. It was taken down by a resolution of the vestry in 1842 as 'dangerous,' being then rented by Mr. P. Walsh. The loss of this picturesque feature of the church is to be deplored.

But the Broadgates students, and after them the members of Pembroke, had also the use of the aisle itself for their devotions. Probably it was shared originally by the other hostels around.

1 It might, to judge by the prints, have been of the fifteenth century; but the unfeeling mutilation of the tops of the beautiful aisle windows by the floor points to a later date.

2 Like Chaucer's 'Sergeant of lawe, war and wys,

That often hadde ben atte parvys; '

or that 'parvise' where we have all been supposed to respond to the Masters of the Schools' questions.

3 Wood MS. D. 2, fol. 67.

Now that the library and school over the aisle of St. Aldate's has been destroyed, St. Mary's alone retains a similar chamber. In that church, over the old Congregation-house, a public library was begun to be built about 1320 by Bishop Cobham; but until 1409 the books were kept in the vaulted room below, locked up in chests or chained to desks. There is such a library of chained volumes over one of the aisles of Wimborne Minster, and also in All Hallows, Hereford, and in Hereford Cathedral. In St. Mary's the legists used St. Thomas's Chapel. When a great Congregation was holden, 'at the proclamation of the bedell for the faculties to receed or goe to their places, the non-Regents went in the Cancell, the Theologues in the Congregation house, the Decretists in St. Ann's Chapel, the Physitians in St. Catherin's, the Jurists in St. Thomases, and the Proctors with the Regents in Our Ladie's Chapel' (Wood's City, ii. 30).