Medieval European Education

Assignment 2a. Philosophy and History of Education

What is a University? The rise of universities in Mediaeval Europe.

In the world today we all seem to take both schools and universities for granted, I am going to take a closer look at what exactly a university is. A university is an institution of higher education and research which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects and provides both undergraduate education and post graduate education. (Wikipedia, Online). The world university finds its origins in Latin and means, ‘universitas magistrorum et scholarium’ this was first used in the early 13th century and means a ‘community of teachers and scholars’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1985)

When we consider what a university is, it’s

Professors and doctors had to swear “ Abosolute obedience to the student elected, student rector “ these could pass or change any rule within the university (Rempel, 2005, Online). This was because medieval universities mainly in Italy had no central organization, and so the student eventually took over and were able to run the universities how they wanted too. I also found differences how education was seen and what it was used for, this also shows differences in how lessons are given and the subjects taught. Firstly I am going to look at how medieval universities started. The earliest universities were formed in france and Italy, these were mainly controlled by church who believed that their sole aim was to train priests for them, some of these cathedral schools had extensive numbers of students and they eventually instigated new universities to accommodate them all. ( Gutek, 1972.) Medieval Europe’s three main universities, Bologna, Paris, Oxford, were a spontaneous growth of the 12th century, ‘the age of the wandering scholar. ( John Lawson, Medieval education and the reformation, p31) You would find the 12th century student was ‘rootless moving from one university to another after being attracted by the work of a particular master. It was later during the century when settled communities of masters and scholars formed

Although as we know education was generally used to teach future priest some secular knowledge was indispensable and this was traditionally composed of the ‘ seven liberal arts and these were divided into the elementary trivium and the more advanced quadrivium . The trivium consisted of grammer, rhetoric and logic, and the quadriuim is made up of music, Arithmetic geometry and astronomy. The basic of all this study was the faculty of arts. The lecture and the disputation together with the prescribed book formed the basis of all the university teaching with the master who would speak in latin systematically analysed and commented on the text (John Lawson p38) . Also the students would undertake two different exercises ‘repetitions. Most of the learning from this time period are dead and completely forgotten, but they have paved the way for modern science, but generally the teaching style had serious limitations and Dr Rashdall, ‘the mediaeval universities’ greatest service to mankind was simply this, that they placed the administration of human affairs in short, the government of the world in the hands of educated men ( john Lawson