Hans Peter Broedel
The Church reform of the high middle ages was a movement of the highest significance to European culture and society. From its beginnings as an effort to free monasteries from secular interference, the movement eventually led to a major restructuring of the relations between the institutional Church and the laity, the general population. The effects of reform and its underpinning ideology can be seen in the growth of papal power, the rise of new religious orders, increasing concern with heresy, and the crusades. For us, here, however, of particular importance was a newfound emphasis upon clerical education and a corresponding search for intellectually satisfying and rational bases for Christian doctrine. Without these parallel developments within the Church, the achievements of early modern science would probably have been impossible.
Some modicum of education had always been required of Christian clergy, of course, and through the early middle ages monasteries and cathedral schools had preserved the basics of the classical Roman curriculum. This consisted of a sequence of two courses of study. The first, the trivium, was based around language, and included the study of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The second, the quadrivium, focused on mathematics – arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.1 Together, these comprise the liberal arts, which the Romans thought all free men (liberi) should master. With the reform movement, however, educational requirements became more uniform and more exacting. Even parish priests were now expected to read and speak competent Latin and to compose sermons regularly. Priests in large urban churches also had to have some understanding of biblical exegesis to ensure that their sermons were properly orthodox and to counter a rising tide of heresy. To meet these needs, as well as to supply a growing demand for academically trained professionals in government, business, and urban society, new forms of schools arose, and, of these. by far the most important was the studium generale, the university.2
Curiously, the very first European university was an exception, for it was founded in Bologna by laymen who wanted to study Roman law. Bologna was unusual in this as well: the students ran the school. This makes perfect sense because they were the ones paying tuition: in order to safeguard their investment, they formed a kind of corporation, a students’ guild, which hired faculty, set the curriculum, and ensured that academic standards were maintained.3 Faculty who were late to class or droned on too long could be fined or fired.4 Thankfully for generations of professors, though, everywhere else it was a different story, and the faculty, with support from the Church and local governments, ran the show. In all cases, however, medieval universities took the form of guilds, collective associations of teachers and students who banded together to protect their rights and privileges, set standards, and resist un