The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [20]
In civil law the problems were typically secular affairs such as boundary disputes, non-payment of debts, ownership of property, individual and community rights, and so on. It is easy to see why lawyers prospered. Suddenly, the way to riches and success lay in advocacy. ‘You cannot help but make a fortune,’ it was said, ‘if you are a lawyer.’ The great Palace of the Notaries in Bologna is witness to the financial power of this fastest growing of the medieval professions. The palace stands, impressively and above all independently, between the cathedral and the town hall.
It may have been this reputation for legal instruction that first drew people to Bologna. By the late twelfth century there were perhaps fourteen countries represented in the city’s lecture halls. Students were also attracted by the fact that independence of thought came easily in a city whose tradition as a Roman municipality had saved it from the grip of feudalism that stifled ideas in the towns of northern Europe. Apart from a few years under dictatorship, Bologna had been republican for centuries. Furthermore, distant as it was from the ecclesiastical power of Rome, it had developed a healthy disrespect for blind obedience to dogma. Most important of all, it was now under the protection of the German Holy Roman Emperor, which saved it from papal interference.
It was perhaps for all these reasons that Bologna became the seat of the world’s first university, a unique medieval foundation. There had been nothing like universities in any of the ancient or classical civilisations. There had been schools of higher learning, but these were either exclusively for priestly training, or seats of academic research accessible only to limited numbers of private students. Such schools neither set examinations nor awarded recognised degrees.
By the middle of the twelfth century, when students began to set themselves up in groups so as to afford lessons, the liberal arts had been taught in Bologna for nearly a century. As most of the students were wealthy and their presence was vital to the economy of the city, they were accorded considerable freedom of action. The university was run by the students, who hired teachers and set the rules. By 1189 there were strict guidelines for fixing the rents of students who were not native to the city.
Foreign students grouped into ‘nations’ (German, English, Spanish, Tuscan, Roman, and so on) and eventually formed two general groups, one from south of the Alps and the other from the north. Some of them managed to hire and eventually to build halls of residence. One still exists in Bologna: the College of Spain.
There were three lecture periods a day. The first ran from the morning bell at 7 am until 9 am, the second lasted from 2 pm until 4 pm, and the third from 4 pm to 5.30 pm. Between 9 am and 2 pm there were ‘special’ lectures, or a rest period. The academic course was made up of a series of lessons, each of which took the same form: a summary of the text to be taught, the intention of the teacher regarding his interpretation of the text, the reading of the text with commentary, repetition of the text, general principles to be drawn from the text, and questions. In the evening teachers took turns at repeating the day’s main points, except during Lent when disputations were conducted in which the teachers took on all comers in argument.
Regular holidays were a problem because of the uncertainty of the calendar. Saints’ days were free, as was every Thursday. Apart from these, the long vacation began on 7 September and the students had ten days off at Christmas, two weeks at Easter, up to three weeks after the end of Lent, and two days for Whitsun.
Courses consisted of what was read aloud to the assembly, and students participated in the reading. (At Oxford and Cambridge, undergraduates are still said to ‘read’ a subject.) Books were