Rise of the universities: Paris, Oxford and Cambridge

The University of Paris grew out of the Paris schools, above all the cathedral school of Notre-Dame. In 1200 King Philip II Augustus granted the masters and scholars of Paris a royal privilege, often regarded as the university’s first charter, and in 1215 the papal legate Robert de Courçon issued statutes fixing the minimum age of teachers (21 in the arts, 30 in theology) and the length of study (six and eight years). The students were grouped by origin into four “nations”. In 1229, after a tavern brawl at Carnival time, the regent Blanche of Castile demanded punishment and the city guards killed several students; on 27 March the masters suspended lectures and many left Paris. The strike lasted more than two years and ended when Pope Gregory IX, himself a former Paris student, issued the bull Parens scientiarum on 13 April 1231, which empowered the university to frame its own statutes and to suspend teaching if it was denied justice. Bologna, where a university of law students formed in the 12th century (traditionally dated to 1088), is usually counted the oldest.

Teaching at Oxford is attested from the late 11th century. In 1209, after the town authorities hanged two scholars, some of the masters left; a group of them settled at Cambridge and began a university there. The head of the Oxford masters bore the title of chancellor from at least 1214, and in 1231 they were recognized as a corporation; in the same year royal writs of Henry III already referred to the “custom of the university” at Cambridge. Later in the century Thomas Aquinas taught theology at Paris.