s also the great weapon which might
be employed against the masters of the Studium. The degradation of the
masters was a gradual process, and it was never complete. The
privileges given by Frederick Barbarossa to Lombard scholars in (p. 025)
the middle of the twelfth century included a right of jurisdiction
over their pupils, and a Papal Bull of the end of the century speaks
of masters and scholars meeting together in congregations. The
organisation of the Universitas ultimately confined membership of
congregation to students, and the powers of the Rector rendered the
magisterial jurisdiction merely nominal. The loss of their privileges
is attributed by Canon Rashdall to the attitude they adopted in the
early struggles between the municipality and the student-guilds. The
doctors, who were citizens of Bologna, allied themselves, he says,
"with the City against the students in the selfish effort to exclude
from the substantial privileges of the Doctorate all but their own
fellow-citizens.... It was through identifying themselves with the
City rather than with the scholars that the Doctors of Bologna sank
into their strange and undignified servitude to their own pupils."
They made a further mistake in quarrelling with the town--the earliest
migrations were migrations of professors--and when, in the middle of
the thirteenth century, a permanent _modus vivendi_ was arrived at
between the city and the universities, the rights of the doctors
received no consideration. Other citizens of Bologna were forbidden to
take an oath of obedience to the rectors, but the masters, who, in
theory, possessed rights of jurisdiction over their pupils, were, (p. 026)
in fact, compelled by the universities to take this oath. Even
those of them who received salaries from the town were not exempted. A
doctor who refused to take a vow of obedience to the representative of
his pupils had no means of collecting his lecture-fees, which remained
of some importance even after the introduction of salaries, and he was
liable to further punishment at the will of the Rector. The ultimate
penalty was _deprivatio_, and when this sentence was pronounced, not
only were the lectures of the offending doctor boycotted, but all
social intercourse with him was forbidden; students must avoid his
company in private as well as decline his ministrations in the
Studium. His restoration could only be accomplished by a vote of the
whole University solemnly assembled in