The Medieval University
by Ken Mondschein

The university of the Middle Ages was not entirely unlike the modern institution that we are familiar with today, in that its ostensible goal was to train the next generation of young minds for a career-in this case, the church. Much as in the modern world, the goal for attending school was social mobility, for those who tended to enter the clergy were those who would otherwise not inherit much in the way of worldly power-younger sons of the nobility, and, increasingly, of the growing middle class.   

The social life at the medieval university was also quite similar to today's system. Their rules and regulations set up provisions against gambling, flamboyant dress, staying up to all hours, and associating with loose women. A letter from a father to his student son, for instance, gave a proscription against the "freshman fifteen," by advising him to keep a long, heavy stick "like a sword" in his room, with which to exercise. Chronicles and other primary sources are rife with accounts of fights, riots, and other disturbances breaking out amongst the students and the youngsters of the town. And as much as modern-day professors may complain, 21st-century students who stay up late drinking in pubs are doing no more than following the tradition established by their forebears.
  Ironically enough, this lawlessness promoted the development of the University. In 1215, Pope Innocent III (himself a graduate) insured the establishment and autonomy of the University of Paris by confirming the corporation of universitas et studentium (university and students) as autonomous from local and Church authorities in their power of self-government. Matriculated students were now subject to ecclesiastical, not civil law, save for in criminal matters.

The Curriculum
A medieval University's curriculum was generally broken down into the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the quadrivium of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. This breakdown of the liberal arts was focused mainly on the philosophical and theological implications of the subjects. Grammar, rhetoric, and logic were all related to the discipline of reading and writing Latin, the common international language of the Middle Ages. Arithmetic could be used for accounting revenues and taxes; music was an integral part of church services; and astronomy could predict eclipses and other heavenly signs. Finally, geometry was a means of showing transcendental truth by means of the various laws that governed the relations of angles and lines.
  The study of the trivium and quadrivium enjoyed preeminence at the three great northern universities-Oxford, Cambridge, and, especially, Paris. In Italy, Spain, and the south of France, where the curriculum might have been called more career-oriented, study centered more on law and medicine.
  The first degree awarded by a university was the baccalaureate, the equivalent of the modern bachelor's degree. This took several years to earn, varying both by school and the student's ability. After this, the new "bachelor" could (assuming other circumstances to be favorable) attempt to procure for himself a license to teach. The licentia docendi was issued by the scholasticus, or the local bishop's dean in charge of the school. The new teacher was then admitted into the circle with the title of magister, and the new "master," was then given his academic robes.
  Today, universities still aim to cultivate the naive student into the learned adult, with much of the same liberal arts curriculum that was practiced in the 13th century. Of course, unlike their medieval predecessors, modern students readily seek financial stability, rather than religious piety, after graduation. Even so, modern college life, with all its rituals, remains a living legacy from the Middle Ages. b