nder twenty-one; of theology under thirty-five. Every master must
undergo an examination as to qualification and moral fitness at the
Episcopal Chancellor's Court. Early in the twelfth century the four
faculties of Law, Medicine, Arts and Theology were formed and the
national groups reduced to four: French, Picards, Normans and English.
Each group elected its own officers, and in 1245 at latest the _Quatre
Nations_ were meeting in the church of St. Julien le Pauvre to choose
a common head or rector, who soon superseded the chancellor as head
of the university. The rectors in process of time exercised almost
sovereign authority in the Latin Quarter; they ruled a population of
ten thousand masters and students, who were exempt from civic
jurisdiction. In 1200 some German students ill-treated an innkeeper
who had insulted their servant. The provost of Paris and some armed
citizens attacked the students' houses and blood was shed, whereupon
the masters of the schools complained to the king, who was fierce in
his anger, and ordered the provost and his accomplices to be cast into
prison, their houses demolished and vines uprooted. The provost was
given the choice of imprisonment for life or the ordeal by water. Then
followed a series of ordinances which abolished secular jurisdiction
over the students and made them subject to ecclesiastical courts
alone.

In the reign of Philip le Bel a provost of Paris dared to hang a
scholar. The rector immediately closed all classes until reparation
was made, and on the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin the _cures_
of Paris assembled and went in procession, bearing a cross and holy
water to the provost's house, against which each cast a stone, crying,
in a loud voice--"Make honourable reparation, thou cursed Satan, to
thy mother Holy Church, whose privileges thou hast injured, or suffer
the fate of Dathan and Abiram." The king dismissed his provost, caused
ample compensation to be made, and the schools were reopened.

The famous Petit Pre aux Clercs (Clerks' Meadow) was the theatre of
many a fight with the powerful abbots of St. Germain des Pres.[70]
From earliest times the students had been wont to take the air in the
meadow, which lay between the monastery and the river, and soon
claimed the privilege as an acquired right. In 1192 the inhabitants of
the monastic suburb resented their insolence, and a free fight ensued,
in which several scholars were wounded and one was killed. The rec