The University of Paris.

The importance of the early development of the University of Paris to the modern university consists mainly in the fact that all academic faculties since organized are directly traceable to this source. As the University of Bologna was primarily a corporation of law students, the University of Paris grew from the association of teachers of scholastic philosophy. The Crusades had set in motion the religious and moral sentiments of Europe, which greatly agitated the masses. This gave an extensive impulse to the teaching of the cloister and Episcopal schools, of which Paris by various circumstances became the centre and embodiment. In Paris all teachers came directly under the power of the chancellor of the chapter of Notre Dame de Paris. This was quite different from Bologna, where the schools and the town were both new, while in Paris, from the first, a well established and powerful body antagonized the system which ultimately would break the Episcopal schools and become a studium generale, or school for all with no religious restrictions and specialized study.

Gradually the fame of the Paris schools rose, increased numbers came to Paris to graduate and teach, the chancellor tried to compell the masters to live in La Cite, the small island on which the cathedral stands, because the chancellor's jurisdiction then did not extend to the left bank of the Seine. The chancellor's reason for trying to keep the Paris masters in his jurisdiction was a fear of definite organization, which would carry out the proposed opposition to his graduating younger men, who as teachers would of course reduce the fees of the other instructors. The masters claimed the right to be consulted by the chancellor in the conferring of degrees, since they, not the chancellor, had any interest in restraining the number of teachers. Soon the masters began to claim that the chancellor's duty was only to graduate after they had certified to the candidate's fitness by public and private (oral, of course) examination. The masters were actuated partly by the desire to keep out unqualified aspirants, but in the greatest measure because of the reduction of their income, which depended on the fees each pupil paid to his master.

The teachers "organized" in a grand union, but while they confined themselves to legal means they effected nothing. So the Union teachers proceeded to "boycott" the graduates of the chancellor who had refused to join the union and to swear to its statutes and to pay its assessments.

This "boycott" they enforced by refusing to teach the chancellors' pets in the higher branches of learning, and by refusing to let their pupils attend the readings of the non-Union teachers. The chapter and chancellor of Paris, seeing their lawful authority thus obstructed, proceeded to imprison the Union teachers, and as a final sentence, excommunicated the recalcitrant masters. Then they strengthened their union more and more. When the masters who were excommunicated appealed to Rome, the Pope recognized these unions as corporations and thus practically gave the teachers the upper hand. These corporations became faculties in the thirteenth century in somewhat the following way: Comparatively little specialized teaching existed at Paris towards the end of the twelfth century, and most of the Masters in Arts only taught the "trivial arts," as Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectics, While the Quadruvian was reserved for higher art students. Thus the teachers of arts would have their fees reduced by the graduates of of the Chancellor. However, with the necessity of more specialized teaching the board which drew the professors of any of the four disciplines together would strengthen the separate unions of the Masters of Arts, Theology, Law and Medicine. As time went on, the teachers in the unions found that their common interests would be guarded better by relying on themselves than by appealing to the other masters, especially as all these quarrels tended to have the opponents of the chapter and Chancellor repose in the chancellors' prison, or to be excommunicated? perhaps both. They appealed for a reverse of the the sentence of excommunication from master after master at last bore fruit. The Papacy was then following out its principles of intellectual emancipation from the rules of the old "regular" schools, and soon recognized the rights of these teachers' unions to corporate existence by permitting them to use a common seal, and to be represented by an attorney. This saved each excommunicated master the vexation and expense of a journey to Rome to have his case revised, and also put a certain check on the chancellor, who would now have to deal, not with any single master but with his guild brethren as a corporation. Between 1215 and 1254 these corporations came to be known as facultates.

Departing from its original meaning of ability, Facultas had come to denote a common course of teaching and then came to be applied to the common bond of union between the professors of the same branch of teaching. In 1254 the University in its famous letter to Pope Alexander IV says, "that it was the outcome of the four Faculties of Arts or Philosophy, Theology, Laws and Medicine."

The constitution of any university depends entirely on the proportionate use of two factors: the powers in the hands of the faculties as such, and the powers entrusted to a rector, or as we say, president. The faculty system is from Paris, that of the rector from Bologna. The constitution of Harvard University is only seemingly anomolous since the overseers exercise the power which in Europe is exercised by the faculties or teachers in convocation. The Corporation of Harvard College, although only designed to copy the body found in the English colleges under the university in power is the Bolognese student rectorship vested in a commission of seven men.

TAY.