It seems to have been generally accepted that scholastic and university institutions altered little in the fifteenth century. Church schools clearly remained under the direct control of the establishments to which they belonged — monasteries, convents, cathedrals or collegiate churches. Urban schools were usually governed by the contract drawn up between a commune and the teachers it had recruited. The situation in universities, however, was more complex. Officially they remained the same as the thirteenth-century foundations, autonomous bodies of academics and/or students, with the same constituent parts — ‘nations’ and faculties — and the same elected officers — rectors, deans, proctors. University autonomy relied on a body of privileges granted by ecclesiastical and lay authorities, guaranteed ultimately by the Papacy. Statutes drawn up by the universities themselves regulated their internal administration and discipline.
New universities of the fifteenth century adopted statutes modelled, more or less faithfully, on those of older universities. In the kingdom of Aragon, Lerida (itself inspired by Bologna) was the most popular prototype; in Germany and central Europe, Paris furnished the pattern, although with considerable modifications. New French provincial universities adopted statutes that mingled elements from various sources (Paris, Bologna, Montpellier, Toulouse). In Scotland the statutes of St Andrews were modelled on those of Orleans and Angers and in their turn were copied in Glasgow. It should be added that the last decade of the fifteenth century did witness the birth of an original system, that of the ‘university college’ or, if preferred, the college endowed with the right to confer university degrees: it was found in Spain at Siguenza (1489) and Alcala (1499) and in Scotland atAberdeen (1494—1505).
Yet, behind this relatively immutable fagade, considerable changes were taking place. It was not that university autonomy and privileges had become meaningless: masters and students were devoted to both, above all in the oldest and most prestigious establishments, such as Paris and Oxford. Masters and students fought to defend their traditional freedoms, above all by strikes, and they managed to preserve a not inconsiderable part of them. They were able to remain more or less in control of the organisation of courses and examinations, and to preserve crucial elements in the guarantees which conferred on them a privileged personal status with protection from military requisitions, taxes and local secular courts. They were, however, powerless to prevent challenge to the actual principle of university autonomy, that is to say challenge to the right of the studia generalia to act without any control save that of the Papacy (which was remote and sympathetic), thereby corporately escaping the constraints of the political and economic system which princes were imposing on their states. By the end of the Middle Ages such constraints were being strengthened in every sphere, political power was increasingly intolerant of corporate autonomy and its officials were able to interfere in the internal affairs of universities knowing they would be supported.
At the same time it needs to be said that some universities were by reason of their intellectual capacity aspiring to a direct political role; this merely served to precipitate the tightening of external control. Faced with a variety of serious problems the kings of France had traditionally tended to seek the opinion and support of Paris University. The crisis of the Great Schism, followed by the Councils of Constance and Basle, in which they participated in large numbers, reinforced the belief of Parisian teaching masters that, by assuming the mantle of a faltering authority (in this case that of the Papacy), they could be directly involved in the actual exercise of power. Thus, during the first decades of the fifteenth century the University of Paris, through its chancellor, Jean Gerson (see his speech Vivat rex of 140 5), offered its services to the king; it took part in the representative assemblies, while later it was to support the Anglo-Burgundian regime and press vigorously for the conviction of Joan of Arc. Such political involvement was rash and would, after 1436, earn the undying rancour of Charles VII. One might quote other examples: Prague University would be one of the protagonists in the Hussite revolt, on the side of the moderate ‘Calixtins’; Oxford’s long-standing tolerance towards Wyclif and his Lollard heirs would expose that university to a purge at the beginning of the fifteenth century, when Lollardy had become the ideological basis of a movement perceived as subversive by the Lancastrian kings.
In a broader sense it is the general evolution of political institutions at the end of the Middle Ages that explains why states everywhere, whether principalities or urban republics, sought to reduce the autonomy of the old universities to a level they found acceptable, and to endow new ones, which they themselves had created, with liberties that were strictly limited and supervised.
What form did such assumption of control take? As shown, it in no way precluded princely interest in, and respect for, the institutions themselves or for the men who made them function. The latter’s personal status was guaranteed; they were not begrudged honours and favours; career prospects were good, even posts in princely circles being open to them. In the fifteenth century, towns and sovereigns conceded substantial financial support to promote universities. Considerable sums were devoted both to new foundations and old institutions for the establishment or enlargement of colleges, the erection of university buildings (previously an almost unheard-of occurrence), the endowment of student scholarships or salaried lectureships, the stocking of libraries. The understanding is that this munificence was commensurate with the university’s willingness to accept a greater degree of control. However, in established universities things did not always go smoothly, and princes sometimes had to impose a ‘general reform’ on the uncooperative in order to bring statutes and privileges into line with the requirements of the new political order. The university reforms previously discussed were practically all achieved through the exertion of political power. The great reform of Paris, for example, was officially promulgated in 1452 by a papal legate, but had in fact been prepared by a body of royal commissioners appointed by the government of Charles VII. Its avowed aim was to restore order to an institution whose repeated strikes, critical spirit and corporate arrogance were particularly irritating to the king.
The state’s desire for control was brought to bear even on the actual content of courses with regard to the strictness of their orthodoxy. At Oxford Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, acting in the king’s name as much as his own, hunted out suspected Lollards. In Paris in 1474 Louis XI approved the temporary expulsion of all ‘nominalists’.
Above all governments were sensitive to the issue of university privileges. There was no thought of abolishing them, but rather of supervising them strictly by subjecting them to the authority of the state’s officials and ordinary courts. In France, in the 1440s, theparlements of Paris and of Toulouse had their jurisdiction over universities confirmed and extended. At about the same time the office of chancellor at Oxford and Cambridge ceased to be held by a regent elected from among his peers; it passed into the hands of court prelates, intimates of the king. In cities of the Italian peninsula designated officials — tratta-tores or reformatores studii, ‘Savi dello studio’ — were in charge of implementing the policy of the commune vis-a-vis its university. On the other hand the ancient weapon of the strike or secession, which had been the principal means of resistance of the studia generalia, everywhere fell into disuse.
Furthermore, princes wanted the right to oversee recruitment in institutions where previously the rule had been election or co-option of lecturers and the unrestricted registration of students regardless of their social and geographical origins. The institution of salaried lectureships (or of ecclesiastical prebends reserved for lecturers) allowed the authorities to intervene directly in the recruitment of teachers. As for student enrolment, it was to become subject to various rules and regulations. The communes and signorie on the Italian peninsula sought to insist on their subjects attending the local university; thus in 1407 Padua became the official university of the Venetian state. In theory foreign students were still welcome, but the schism and general warfare, together with an overall intensification of nationalist sentiments, meant that the threat of expulsion hung over them constantly. In 1470 Louis XI expelled from Paris Burgundian students who were subjects of Charles the Bold, and in 1474 he decreed that in future a French rector would be mandatory. At the same time the authenticity of students was more closely monitored. Public authorities, tired of seeing spurious or perpetual students claiming, by reason of university clerical status, those fiscal and judicial privileges to which they had no right, enforced stricter registration procedures and a maximum duration of study. Louis XII was to do precisely this in Paris in 1499.
There is no doubt that these measures did not as yet constitute coherent practice, but they did reveal an obvious shift in attitudes. The increased mastery of external authorities over universities (and the corresponding decline of ecclesiastical control) was in fact a response to fairly high social expectations, particularly from groups of officials and administrators who entrusted to universities their children’s education. Some of the university men at least seem to have found their own interests mirrored in this development.
It would be a mistake to overemphasise the contrast between the almost ideal situation pertaining in the thirteenth century (recruitment that was not restricted by social and geographical factors, autonomous and democratic administration of institutions, enthusiasm for study) and the decadence at the end of the Middle Ages. Apart from the fact that such an ideal situation doubtless never existed, the comparison would at best involve the oldest universities, while scarcely making sense in terms of the more numerous recent foundations. It remains true that the general political climate of the fifteenth century exerted its influence on both the internal administration and the way of life of the universities. Hierarchical and authoritarian features were everywhere strengthened. ‘Student power’ on the Bolognese model, where it existed, like community spirit, was in retreat before the increasing weight of political power, as also before the enhanced authority of the teaching doctors, who proved more tractable partners for princes. General assemblies were replaced by restrictive commissions. University life style was transformed so that magisterial authority and the influence of the hierarchies became more obvious. The decline of disputation in favour of lectiones, the increasing opulence of dress and facilities, the cost and lavishness of ceremonies, especially the conferring of degrees, had the cumulative effect of more clearly demonstrating the growing integration of universities into the controlling political order. This was where at the end of the Middle Ages the true ‘aristocratisation’ of universities lay, rather than in a hypothetical narrowing of social recruitment. This aristocratisation went hand in hand with a more pronounced local character. It is true that some old centres (Paris, Bologna) and new ones (Cracow, Louvain) retained sufficient prestige to attract students from a distance, although in limited numbers. Furthermore, the pull exerted by Italian humanists syphoned off growing numbers of students from all parts of Europe to the studia generalia of the peninsula (Padua, Ferrara, Perugia, Siena). Everywhere else, however, in consequence of the increase in the numbers of new universities, ‘regionalisation’ of recruitment became entrenched, an obvious sign of closer integration into the local social and political framework. Municipal elites and local bodies of officials tightened their grip on such institutions with greater ease. As ‘living in’ became the rule (in colleges, halls and all kinds of hostels) — something, for example, which the Paris reform of 1452 tried to impose — it proved an excellent way of stamping out certain aspects of traditional university life that could not fit in any more with the new social and political order.