sisters lies in the fact that, at Paris and at Oxford, masters and
scholars alike were all clerks, possessing the tonsure and wearing the
clerical garb, though not necessarily even in minor orders. They could
thus claim the privileges of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and at
Oxford this jurisdiction was exercised by the Chancellor, who also,
along with the proctors, was responsible for academic discipline and
could settle disputes between members of the University. In this, the
University of Oxford had a position of independence which Paris never
achieved, for though the Parisian Rector's court dealt with cases of
discipline and with internal disputes, criminal jurisdiction remained
the prerogative of the Bishop. In the middle of the fourteenth
century, royal grants of privileges to the University of Oxford
culminated in the subjection of the city, and from the middle of the
fifteenth "the burghers lived in their own town almost as the helots
or subjects of a conquering people." (_Cf._ Rashdall, vol. ii. chap.
12, sec. 3). The constitution of Oxford was closely imitated at
Cambridge, where the Head of the University was also the Chancellor,
and the executive consisted of two rectors or proctors. In the
fifteenth century the University freed itself from the ecclesiastical
jurisdiction of the Bishop of Ely.

Germany possessed no universities before the fourteenth century. (p. 048)
Prague was founded in 1347-8, and was followed before 1400 by Vienna,
Erfurt, Heidelberg, and Cologne, and in the first quarter of the next
century by Wuerzburg, Leipsic, Rostock, and in the Low Countries by
Louvain. The first Scottish University dates from the early years of
the fifteenth century. While the provincial universities of France
tended to follow Bologna rather than Paris as their model, the German
universities approximated to the Parisian type, and although the
founders of the Scottish universities were impressed by some of the
conditions of the student-universities, and provided for them a
theoretical place in their constitutions, yet the three medieval
Scottish universities of Scotland, in their actual working, more
nearly resembled the master type.

CHAPTER IV (p. 049)

COLLEGE DISCIPLINE

We are now in a position to approach the main part of our
subject--life in a medieval University of masters--and we propose to
proceed at once to its most characteristic featur