Students At a Lecture
Medieval Universities
In the Middle Ages students generally began their university careers between the ages of twelve and fifteen. For many, the new-found independence from the prior constraints of childhood was license enough for carousing, brawling and drunkenness. The attitude among students was that as future scholars they were a priviliged class for whom the normal social strictures had very few holds. Students at universities in various towns for instance held themselves above the local folk and the town people in turn had similar feelings of aversion for the rowdy students. Fights, riots and brawls were common place not only among the students themselves, but with landlords, tavern keepers and merchants
The idea of a university--from the Latin word universitasmeaning a union--came about as a result of one such riot in 1200 between students and the townspeople of Paris. Irritated by what he saw as shabby treatment by a local tavern keeper, an exchange student from Germany began a fight with the offending tavern keeper and his friends. The fight escalated into a riot and the students were set upon by officers of their college chancellor. Angered at being suppressed on all sides the students gather together to form a universitas, i.e., a university, whose sole intent was the protection of student independence and student rights.
Students at some universities actually had considerable power at some universities: Universities in Italy, Spain and parts of Southern France, for instance, tended to model themselves after the University of Bologna where students made up the university board that had the ultimate say in the hiring of professors, the determination of their wages, and whether the faculty should be punished or fired. At these southern universities, students who felt they were insufficiently taught could have their offending professor fined or fired
At the Northern universities, however, universities were not a corporation of students, but one of faculty and administrators. Consequently, students at these universities tended to have less clout than their southern counterparts.
For the most part students were poor--many of the colleges that were begun in the Middle Ages were designed to educate the children of poor people initially, but even those who came from more elevated backgrounds were frequently strapped for cash. The debts these students incurred with the townspeople--usually for drink, food or lodgings-- did little to ameliorate the already testy relationships between town and gown.
At some universities students were able to find housing within the instituional premises. Living on campus as it were could sometimes put a crimp in the freedom of students. In 1380, students at the college of Dainville in Paris who were housed at the college, for instance, were watched day and night by an eagle-eyed master. We are told that:
Day and night, until they go to bed, the door is not to be closed, so the master can visit whenever he wishes and so that the pupils will increase their zeal for study and fear to fall into idleness or bad habits. If he deems it necessary, the master shall be allowed to hold the key to each room1.
On the other hand, it is clear that students often found lodgings wherever they could with the local townspeople. In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, for example hende Nicholas, the student who is handy with the ladies, lives off-campus in a room rented to him by the local carpenter
For all the carousing, whoring and drinking they undertook with gusto, students at Medieval universities were evidently also very serious about their studies. University programs were extremely rigorous with huge amounts of memorization required of the various texts. Students were given no specific directives as to which classes to attend. They generally picked the classes they wanted and when they were ready they took a final exam with the university chancellor. What mattered was this exam after which a student, if he was successful, would be awarded a certificate that was comparable to our present-day baccalaureate degree.
For students seeking futures as professionals, student life continued for another three to four years after which they were awarded either master's or doctoral degrees. Candidates for a master's degree in mathematics, generally enrolled at a university for an additional four years studying not only mathematics but philosophy--usually of Aristotle-- and the sciences.. Master's degrees were also awarded in theology, medicine or law.
The most difficulty post-graduate degree in Medieval Europe was the doctoral degree in theology and students were known to take twelve to fifteen years to fulfill all the requirements and demands of this program.
Students were also expected to develop their skills in the art of debate and disputation. The tradition of publicly defending a thesis in the sense of being able to solidly support one's own arguments, as well as being able to dismantle the logic of an opponent's argument, arose from these public debates. Many of these debates were so long and arduous that they actually lasted for several days.
Despite the obvious hardships and rigorous demands, academic life clearly had its attractions for the numbers of university student continued to grow throughout the Middle Ages. By the 13th century there were approximately seven thousand students at the University of Paris, while Oxford had an enrollment of about two thousand students every year.
1Georges Duby, ed., trans. by Arthur Goldhammer, A History of Private Life, vol. II: Revelations of the Medieval World (Belknap Press, 1988) p. 488.