constitution which one
man might regard as a modification of the constitution of Bologna
would be in the opinion of another more correctly described as a
modification of the constitution of Paris, and a development in the
constitution of a University might be held to have altered its
fundamental position and to transfer it from one class to another.

Where students legislated for themselves, their rules were neither
numerous nor detailed. Our information about life in the
student-universities is, therefore, comparatively small, and it is
with the universities of masters that we shall be chiefly concerned.
It is, however, essential to understand the powers acquired by the
student-guilds at Bologna, the institutions of which were reproduced
by most of the Italian universities, by those of Spain and Portugal,
and, much less accurately, by the smaller universities of France.

CHAPTER II (p. 013)

LIFE IN THE STUDENT-UNIVERSITIES

The Universitates or guilds which were formed in the Studium Generale
of Bologna were associations of foreign students. The lack of
political unity in the Italian peninsula was one of the circumstances
that led to the peculiar and characteristic constitution evolved by
the Italian universities. A famous Studium in an Italian city state
must of necessity attract a large proportion of foreign students.
These foreign students had neither civil nor political rights; they
were men "out of their own law," for whom the government under which
they lived made small and uncertain provision. Their strength lay in
their numbers, and in the effect which their presence produced upon
the prosperity and the reputation of the town. They early recognised
the necessity of union if full use was to be made of the offensive and
defensive weapons they possessed. The men who came to study law at
Bologna were not schoolboys; some of them were beneficed ecclesiastics,
others were lawyers, and most of them were possessed of adequate means
of living. The provisions of Roman Law favoured the creation of such
protective guilds; the privileges and immunities of the clergy (p. 014)
afforded an analogy for the claim of foreign students to possess laws
of their own; and the threat of the secession of a large community was
likely to render a city state amenable to argument. The growth of
guilds or communities held together by common interests and
safeguarded by