Education

The development of the universities

The Middle Ages were thus beset by a multiplicity of ideas, both homegrown and imported from abroad. The multiplicity of students and masters, their rivalries, and the conflicts in which they opposed the religious and civil authorities obliged the world of education to reorganize. To understand the reorganization, one must review the various stages of development in the coming together of students and masters. The first stage, already alluded to, occurred when the bishop or some other authority began to accord to other masters permission to open schools other than the episcopal school in the neighbourhood of his church. A further stage was reached when a license to teach, the jus ubique docendi—granted only after a formal examination—empowered a master to carry on his vocation at any similar centre. A further development came when it began to be recognized that, without a license from pope, emperor, or king, no school could be formed possessing the right of conferring degrees, which originally meant nothing more than licenses to teach.

Students and teachers, as clerici (“clerks,” or members of the clergy), enjoyed certain privileges and immunities, but, as the numbers traveling to ... (200 of 123,993 words)