volume 1, chapter 3.

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EDUCATION: Cambridge.

"Various facts and circumstances ... lend probability to the belief that, long before the time when we have certain evidence of the existence of Cambridge as a university, the work of instruction was there going on. The Camboritum of the Roman period, the Grantebrycgr of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Grentebrige of Domesday, must always have been a place of some importance. It was the meeting-place of two great Roman roads,--Akeman Street, running east and west, and the Via Devana, traversing the north and the south. ... Confined at first to the rising ground on the left bank of the river, it numbered at the time of the Norman Conquest as many as four hundred houses, of which twenty-seven were pulled down to make way for the castle erected by William the Conqueror. ... Under the castle walls, with the view, it would seem, of making some atonement for many a deed of violence and wrong, the Norman sheriff, Picot by name, founded the Church of St. Giles, and instituted in connection with it a small body of secular canons. ... The year 1112 was marked by the occurrence of an event of considerable importance in connection with the subsequent history of the university. The canons of St. Giles, attended by a large concourse of the clergy and laity, crossed the river, and took up their abode in a new and spacious priory at Barnwell. ... The priory at Barnwell, which always ranked among the wealthiest of the Cambridge foundations, seems from the first to have been closely associated with the university; and the earliest university exhibitions were those founded by William de Kilkenny, bishop of Ely from 1254 to 1257, for two students of divinity, who were to receive annually the sum of two marks from the priory. In the year 1133 was founded the nunnery of St. Rhadegund, which, in the reign of Henry VII., was converted into Jesus College; and in 1135 a hospital of Augustinian canons, dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, was founded by Henry Frost, a burgess of the town. ... It was ... a very important foundation, inasmuch as it not only became by conversion in the sixteenth century the College of St. John the Evangelist, but was also ... the foundation of which Peterhouse, the earliest Cambridge college, may be said to have been in a certain sense the offshoot. ... In the year 1229 there broke out at Paris a feud of more than ordinary gravity between the students and the citizens. Large numbers of the former migrated to the English shores; and Cambridge, from its proximity to the eastern coast, and as the centre where Prince Louis, but a few years before, had raised the royal standard, seems to have attracted the great majority. ... The university of Cambridge, like that of Oxford, was modelled mainly on the university of Paris. Its constitution was consequently oligarchic rather than democratic, the government being entirely in the hands of the teaching body, while the bachelors and undergraduates had no share in the passing of new laws and regulations."

_J. B. Mullinger, A History of the University of Cambridge, chapter 1-2._

"The earliest existing college at Cambridge is St. Peter's, generally called Peterhouse, historically founded A. D. 1257, in the reign of Henry III. The Universities are known merely by their situation; as Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, St. Andrews'; but each college has a name, according to the taste of its founder or first members. These names may be divided into two classes, those named from the founder, as Pembroke, Clare, Gonville and Caius (this had two founders, the restorer being Dr. Kaye, who Latinized his name into Caius, always pronounced Keys), King's (from King Henry VI.),--Queens' (from the queens both of Henry VI. and Edward IV.), Sidney Sussex, and Downing;--and those named for beatified persons and objects of worship,--St. Peter's, St. John's, St. Catharine's, St. Mary Magdalene, Corpus Christi, Emmanuel, Jesus Christ's, Trinity and Trinity Hall. The apparent impiety of these names, which in one case of an ancient name now changed, was absolutely revolting, entirely passes off with a few days' use. St. Catharine's soon becomes Cats, and St. Mary Magdalene is always called Maudlin. You readily admit the superiority of Trinity over Corpus ale; go to see a friend who lives on Christ's piece; and hear with regret, that in the boat races Emmanuel has been bumped by Jesus; an epithet being probably prefixed to the last name. These names of course were given in monkish times,--Trinity by Henry VIII., but all the colleges except one were founded before the reign of James I. ... The seventeen colleges ... are distinct corporations. Their foundations, resources, buildings, governing authorities and students, are entirely separate from each other. Nor has any one college the least control in any other. The plan, however, is much the same in all. The presiding authority is in most cases called the Master, or speaking more generally, the Head; while the net proceeds of all the college funds--for the vast wealth supposed to belong to the University really is in the hands of the separate colleges--are distributed among certain of the graduates, called Fellows, who with the Head constitute the corporation. These corporations give board and lodging on various terms to such students as choose to enter the college and comply with its rules, in order to receive its assistance in obtaining the honors of the University; and each college offers its own peculiar inducements to students. ... The whole body of the colleges, taken together, constitutes the University. All those who after residing seven years at some college, have taken the degree of Master of Arts, or a higher one, and keep their name on the college lists by a small payment, vote at the University elections for members of Parliament and all other officers, and manage its affairs. ... The colleges, at certain intervals; present such students as comply with their conditions to University authorities for matriculation, for certain examinations, and for the reception of degrees; and until one receives the degree of Master of Arts, he must remain a member of some college, not necessarily one and the same, to hold any University privileges. After this stage, he may, under certain conditions, break up all his college connections, and yet remain in the University."

_W. Everett, On the Cam., lecture 1._

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EDUCATION: Spain and Portugal.

"Salamanca was founded in the 13th-century, and received its statutes in the year 1422, out of which was developed the following constitution. The rector, with eight 'consiliarii,' all students, who could appoint their successors, administered the university. The doctors render the oath of obedience to the rector. The 'domscholaster' is the proper judge of the school; but he swears obedience to the rector. A bachelor of law must have studied six years, and after five years more he could become licentiate. In filling a paid teachership, the doctor was chosen next in age of those holding the diploma, unless a great majority of the scholars objected, in which case the rector and council decided. This liberal constitution for the scholars is in harmony with the code of Alphonzo X., soon after 1250, in which the liberty of instruction was made a general principle of law. This constitution continued in Salamanca into the 17th century, for Retes speaks of a disputation which the rector held at that time under his presidency. Alcala university was established by cardinal Ximenes, in 1510, for the promotion of the study of theology and philosophy, for which reason it contained a faculty of canon, but not of civil law. The center of the university was the college of St. Ildefons, consisting of thirty-three prebendaries, who could be teachers or scholars, since for admission were required only poverty, the age of twenty, and the completion of the course of the preparatory colleges. These thirty-three members elected annually a rector and three councilors, who controlled the entire university. Salaried teachers were elected, not by the rector and council alone, but by all the students. It had wide reputation. When visited by Francis I., while a prisoner of Spain, he was welcomed by 11,000 students. The Coimbra university, in Portugal, received statutes in 1309, from king Dionysius, with a constitution similar to those just mentioned."

_F. C. Savigny, The Universities of the Middle Ages (Barnard's American Journal of Education, volume 22, page 324)._

EDUCATION: Renaissance.

"Modern education begins with the Renaissance. The educational methods that we then begin to discern will doubtless not be developed and perfected till a later period; the new doctrines will pass into practice only gradually, and with the general progress of the times. But from the sixteenth century education is in possession of its essential principles. ... The men of the sixteenth century having renewed with classical antiquity an intercourse that had been too long interrupted, it was natural that they should propose to the young the study of the Greeks and the Romans. What is called secondary instruction really dates from the sixteenth century. The crude works of the Middle Age are succeeded by the elegant compositions of Athens and Rome, henceforth made accessible to all through the art of printing; and, with the reading of the ancient authors, there reappear through the fruitful effect of imitation, their qualities of correctness in thought, of literary taste, and of elegance in form. In France, as in Italy, the national tongues, moulded, and, as it were, consecrated by writers of genius, become the instruments of an intellectual propaganda. Artistic taste, revived by the rich products of a race of incomparable artists, gives an extension to the horizon of life, and creates a new class of emotions. Finally, the Protestant Reform develops individual thought and free inquiry, and at the same time, by its success, it imposes still greater efforts on the Catholic Church. This is not saying that everything is faultless in the educational efforts of the sixteenth century. First, as is natural for innovators, the thought of the teachers of this period is marked by enthusiasm rather than by precision. They are more zealous in pointing out the end to be attained, than exact in determining the means to be employed. Besides, some of them are content to emancipate the mind, but forget to give it proper direction. Finally, others make a wrong use of the ancients; they are too much preoccupied with the form and the purity of language; they fall into Ciceromania, and it is not their fault if a new superstition, that of rhetoric, does not succeed the old superstition, that of the Syllogism."

_G. Compayré, The History of Pedagogy,