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“Quid dant artes nisi luctum?”: Learning, Ambition, and Careers in the Medieval University

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Stephen C. Ferruolo
Stephen C. Ferruolo*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Extract

My title is taken from a poem, “Tanto viro locuturi,” by the renowned satirist, Walter of Châtillon, who flourished in the latter part of the twelfth century (his dates are circa 1135–1203), that is, just at the time when the first universities were being formed at Paris, at Bologna, and at Oxford. “Quid dant artes nisi luctum et laborem?” reads the complete line: What do the arts give other than trouble and toil? Walter's poem is the bitter lament of a poor scholar unable to find a job and questioning the value of his years of hard study, expense, and self-denial. It is a lament, of course, that echoes through the ages, that we hear no less frequently in our own universities than the contemporaries of Walter of Châtillon seem to have heard it when the institution was first coming into being. Nowhere, perhaps, is it truer than in the tradition-bound institution of the university that “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.” There is one obvious difference between the lament of Walter's poor scholar and our own. His is addressed to the pope. We know the power and the purse strings controlling our careers lie elsewhere than Rome.

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Articles
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History of Education Quarterly , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , Spring 1988 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 Strecker, Karl ed., Moralisch-satirische Gedichte Walters von Chǎtillon (Heidelberg, 1929), poem no. 1, p. 8. On this poem see Karl Strecker, “Quid dant artes nisi luctum!” Studi medievali, new ser., 1 (Nov. 1928): 380–91. On the poet's career see Frederic J. E. Raby, A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1957), 2: 190–204; and J. Hillegouarc'h, “Un poète latin du XIIe siècle: Gautier de Lille, dit Gautier de Chǎtillon,” Bulletin de l'Association Guillaume Budé, 4th ser., 1 (1967): 95–115.Google Scholar

2 On these lines of verse see S. Kuttner, “Dat Galienus opes et sanctio Justiniana,” in Linguistic and Literary Studies in Honor of Helmut A. Hatzfeld, ed. Alessandro S. Crisafulli (Washington, D.C., 1964), 236–46.Google Scholar

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4 On the meaning of this term see G. Ermini, “Concetto di studium generale,” Archivio giuridico, 5th ser., 7 (1942): 3–24. See also Alfred C. Cobban, The Medieval Universities (London, 1975), 23–36; and the pertinent remarks of C. H. Lawrence in his chapter on “The University in State and Church,” in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 1, The Early Oxford Schools, ed. J. I. Catto (Oxford, 1984), 113–14. It is worth recalling here Maurice Powicke's pertinent remark that “the term expresses a relationship to the outside world, it does not define internal structure.” (F. M. Powicke, “Bologna, Paris, Oxford: Three Studia Generalia,” in Ways of Medieval Life and Thought: Essays and Addresses (London, [1950]), 163.Google Scholar

5 CUP, vol. 1, no. 32, pp. 90–93. On this see W. Ullmann, “Honorius III and the Prohibition of Legal Studies,” Juridical Review 60 (Dec. 1948): 177–86.Google Scholar

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11 The role of conflict with external authorities in the history of the university continues to be disputed. Among the historians who have de-emphasized conflict are Powicke, “Bologna, Paris, Oxford,” 158, 167; and Jacques Le Goff, “The Universities and Public Authorities in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,” in Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1980), 139. Cf. Cobban, The Medieval Universities, 235 (“The universities had their genesis in conflict.”) and passim. Cobban sees conflict playing an important role both in Bologna and Paris (“As in the case of the Bologna Studium the constitutional development of Paris University was in large measure a response to conflict” [The Medieval Universities, 75]). Rashdall argues that conflict was less of a factor in Bologna (The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 1: 167–68). Powicke emphasizes the cooperation between the scholars and external authorities in both places (“Here [at Bologna] as in most medieval communities, cooperation was the normal, conflict the exceptional condition of life” [Bologna, Paris, Oxford,” 167]). In a recent article focusing specifically on the relations between the University of Paris and the chancellor, Astrik Gabriel has taken a rather ambiguous stand on the issue by arguing that, although conflict was not a decisive factor in the university's development, the conflicts that did occur “were healthy ones for the development of the autonomy of the university.” (“The Conflict between the Chancellor and the University of Masters and Students at Paris during the Middle Ages,” in Die Auseinandersetzungen an der pariser Universität im XIII Jahrhundert, ed. Albert Zimmerman, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 10 (Berlin, 1976): 106–54, especially 141, 153).Google Scholar

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13 Cf. John, W. Baldwin's review of Ferruolo's, Stephen C. The Origins of the University in the American Historical Review 91 (Apr. 1986): 375–76.Google Scholar

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20 CUP, vol. 1, no. 5, p. 65.Google Scholar

21 I owe this point to William Courtenay of the University of Wisconsin, who is currently assembling a much broader base of prosopographical evidence on the Paris faculties. The completion of that project should provide the data necessary to test the tentative conclusions drawn from the very small statistical sample used here and to carry the analysis forward into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It should also help to correct this sample's bias toward theologians.Google Scholar

22 Here is a clear case where some useful insight to the competitiveness among the faculties in the medieval university can be gained by considering analogous situations in contemporary universities, where the members of professional school faculties often have outside incomes.Google Scholar

23 Notably missing from Baldwin's group of masters are Philip the Chancellor, who was probably teaching theology in the first years of the thirteenth century (and perhaps the arts before then), and another master often confused with him, Philip of Grève, a canon lawyer regent circa 1200.Google Scholar

24 These sources are discussed in Southern, “The Schools of Paris and the School of Chartres,” 129–33. Cf. Stephen C. Ferruolo, The Origins of the University: The Schools of Paris and Their Critics, 1100–1215 (Stanford, 1985), 22–23.Google Scholar

25 One must be cautious with evidence about the social origins of Peter Lombard given the various legends associated with his birth—including that he was one of triplets, his brothers being Gratian and Peter Comestor! On the Lombards’ origins and these legends see Philippe Delhaye, Pierre Lombard: Sa vie, ses oeuvres, sa morale (Montréal, 1961), 12–13.Google Scholar

26 Salisbury, John of Metalogicon 2.10, ed. Clement C. J. Webb (Oxford, 1929), 82.Google Scholar

27 Was taking a chapter dignity at Chartres a career dead end? The evidence suggests that masters had a better chance for promotion to the prelacy if they stayed regent in Paris. And, if so, does this further evidence challenge the fame and prestige of the “school of Chartres”? For the most recent contribution to this controversy and a full bibliography see Southern, “The Schools of Paris and the School of Chartres,” 113–35, especially pertinent is the appendix on “Masters in Government,” 134–35.Google Scholar

28 The long-assumed identification of this master with the Adam who became bishop of St. Asaph's was challenged by L. Minio-Paluello, “The ‘Ars disserendi’ of Adam of Balsham ‘Parvipontanus,’ “ Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 3 (1954): 117–20, but for many the evidence remains inconclusive.Google Scholar

29 Chǎtillon, Walter of In domino confido, in Moralisch-satirische Gedichte, ed. Strecker, , poem no. 3, pp. 38–52. See Ferruolo, Origins of the University, 101–3.Google Scholar

30 Baldwin, “Masters at Paris,“ 152.Google Scholar

31 For a complete list of names and dates of the fifteen masters who held the position of chancellor of Paris between 1166 and 1268, see Gabriel, “Conflict between the Chancellor and the University,” 146–51.Google Scholar

32 Admittedly, expanding the statistical base over a much longer period than that covered by Baldwin's sample must allow for the possibility that the career patterns and motivations of the chancellors may have changed. But the available evidence on the individual careers of these fifteen masters suggests more continuity than change and, I believe, corroborates my general conclusions about the chancellorship to 1268. Where there may be evidence of a significant change is with the career of Chancellor John des Alleux, who refused election to the bishopric of Paris, when Stephen Tempier died in 1280, resigned the chancellorship, and joined the Dominican Order; he then continued to teach theology at St. Jacques until his death in 1306. See Glorieux, Répertoire, 1: 141–43.Google Scholar

33 Frenken, Goswin Die Exempla des Jacob von Vitry (Munich, 1914), 100–101. Cf. Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, ed. Joseph Strange, 2 vols. (Cologne, 1851), 1: 371–72; and Stephen of Bourbon, Anecdotes historiques, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche (Paris, 1877), 418.Google Scholar

34 For Peter of Comestor's views of the scholarly life see Ferruolo, Origins of the University, 208ff.Google Scholar

35 See my forthcoming article, “Philip the Chancellor and the University of Paris.”Google Scholar

36 Lawrence, “The University in State and Church,“ 112–13.Google Scholar

37 For example, by Cobban, The Medieval Universities, 230–31. Cf. Jacques Le Goff, Les intellectuels au moyen ǎge (Paris, 1957); Jacques Le Goff, “How Did the Medieval University Conceive of Itself?,” in Time, Work, and Culture, 122–34; and J. Verger, Les universités au moyen ǎge (Paris, 1973), 176–93.Google Scholar

38 Numerous examples could be cited: John of Salisbury did not become bishop of Chartres until he was over sixty, and then it was Louis VII, not Henry II, who appointed him; both Robert of Courson and Stephen Langton spent long careers in the schools before Innocent III promoted them; and Langton hardly had an easy time gaining recognition as archbishop. See the pertinent remarks of Dunbabin, “Careers and Vocations,” 569–70.Google Scholar

39 Typical of these stories—and one almost certainly fictitious—is that of a certain Master Anselm, who, according to an exemplum found in an early thirteenth-century Oxford manuscript (Ms. Oxford Corpus Christi College 32, f. 99v), was a Paris theologian who, during the reign of Henry II, turned down the bishopric of London. “Multas bonas lecciones legi et multas sanctas sententias tractavi in hoc herbario per multos annos, et quomodo derelinquere illud possum propter episcopatum?” he is reported to have said to the king's messenger. But it should be noted that the exemplum makes it clear that the master had inherited enough money to own a nice house and garden in Paris!Google Scholar

40 On the Chanter's career see John W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and His Circle, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1970), 1: 9–11.Google Scholar

41 Ms. Paris BN lat. 3281, f. 218rb, cited from Gabriel, “Conflict between the Chancellor and the University,” 143.Google Scholar

42 This was especially the policy of Innocent III. See Verger, “A propos de la naissance de l'université de Paris,” 844–45.Google Scholar

43 For my views on the formation of the University of Paris see Ferruolo, Origins of the University, 279–315. I shall be discussing the organization of medieval universities more generally in a forthcoming book, tentatively titled The Development of Universities to 1300, to be published in the Cambridge University Press Series on Medieval Life and Thought.Google Scholar

44 On these sermons see Ferruolo, Origins of the University, 242–58.Google Scholar

45 CUP, vol. 1, no. 20, pp. 78–79.Google Scholar

46 Statuta antiqua universitatis oxoniensis, ed. Strickland Gibson (Oxford, 1931), 72–74. On this action see T. H. Aston and R. Faith, “The Endowments of the University and Colleges to circa 1348,” in History of the University of Oxford, ed. Catto, 1: 268–69.Google Scholar

47 Cf. the views of Cobban, The Medieval Universities, 218–317, and of Southern, “From Schools to University,” 2–3, to Le Goff, “Universities and Public Authorities,” 141–42, and Verger, “A propos de la naissance de l'université de Paris,” 88–89.Google Scholar

48 Verger, Jacques citing Baldwin's research showing that more masters were employed by the kings of England than those of France, has commented, “s'il y avait un rapport simple entre croissance de la demande sociale en élites cultivées et dévelopement de l'université, celle-ci aurait alors du apparaǐtre en Angleterre en non en France!” (“A propos de la naissance de l'université de Paris,” 89). For the evidence on employment, see John W. Baldwin, “Studium et Regnum: The Penetration of University Personnel into French and English Administration at the Turn of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.” L'enseignement en Islam et en Occident au moyen ǎge, Colloques Internationaux de la Napoule 1, ed. George Makdisi, Dominique Sourdel, and Janine Sourdel-Thomine (Paris, 1977), 199–215 (Revue des études islamiques, hors série 13, 44 [1976]).Google Scholar

49 Goff, Le “Universities and Public Authorities,“ 141.Google Scholar

50 Further work needs to be done on the impact of the increasing demand for lawyers on the university. Were as many men attracted to the law as the masters of arts and theologians complained? The evidence is not convincing. Certainly relevant to this question is the conclusion recently drawn by Jean Dunbabin from her survey of the careers of Oxford graduates (“Careers and Vocations,” 575–76) that there was no English administrative post that university graduates monopolized in the Middle Ages, that is, no position for which a university degree (in law or, for that matter, in any other subject) was essential. On the other hand, as John Baldwin has pointed out (“Masters at Paris,” 155), the situation was different in France, where, from very early on, masters seem to have gained a secure hold on the post of officialis. Still, though the officiate handled diocesan legal affairs, there is no evidence that the magistri officiales had necessarily been trained in law. For the complete data on these masters see Baldwin's earlier article, “Studium et regnum” 212.Google Scholar

51 Cf. John, W. Baldwin's comments in the introduction to Universities in Politics: Case Studies from the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, ed. Baldwin and R. A. Goldthwaite (Baltimore, 1972), 14–15.Google Scholar

52 Was Louis VII's choice of John of Salisbury for the bishopric of Chartres a matter of practical politics or prestige? On the public prestige of the medieval university, see Le Goff, “Universities and Public Authorities,” 144–46; and Lawrence, “University in State and Church,” 125–27.Google Scholar