two universities of Oxford and Cambridge. There seems good reason to believe that the school which Alfred founded was established at Oxford. A more central situation could not be found; it was a royal residence, and the scene of many a great council of the notables of the kingdom in the period intervening between Alfred and the Conquest; nor was it in those times a slight matter, that, standing on the Thames, and commanding by the bridge enclosed in its fortifications the passage of the river, it was equally accessible to those who lived north of Thames, and those who lived south. This distinction is clearly recognised in the Saxon Chronicle, and it probably gave rise to the division of all the students of Oxford into the nations' of North Englishmen and South Englishmen, a division apparently as old as the University itself. Once established, we may be certain that the school would continue to exist in a precarious way, even in the troubled reigns of Alfred's Perhaps it was at Oxford that Ethelwerd learnt the exceedingly bad Latin in which, about the year 930, he addressed his cousin Matilda, daughter of the Emperor Otho, with the view of supplying her with information as to the early history of their common country. A charter of Ethelred, dated in 1006, proves at any rate the existence of valuable books in a monastery at Oxford at that time. But at the Conquest the dissolution of the University, if it had ever existed, seems to have been nearly complete. Towards the end of the eleventh century it revived, and all during the twelfth century was making slow upward progress.

successors.

The lectures of Abelard (1075-1149), the most active thinker of his day, were attended by crowds of Englishmen-John of Salisbury for one, who has left us a curious account of them-and some of his hearers must undoubtedly have opened lectures on similar subjects in the halls of Oxford. But it is not till the thirteenth century

E

that we hear of Oxford as an important educational centre. A great stimulus seems to have been applied in 1229 by the migration of a large body of students from Paris to Oxford. The connection between these two universities was during all this period most intimate;-identity of religion, common studies, and the use of Latin as a common language, produced and maintained it ;—they might almost be regarded as two national colleges in an European university. Some of the great men who lectured at Oxford have been already noticed, but there is one, whose connection with the university in this century was long and important, whom we have yet to mention. Robert Grossetête, Bishop of Lincoln, was long a teacher at Oxford, afterwards chancellor, and finally, in his episcopal capacity, ex officio head of the University. A man of varied learning, and a great and liberal nature, he was the warm friend and patron of Roger Bacon, and is mentioned by him in terms of high admiration in the Opus Majus. The number of students who flocked to Oxford in this and the following century far surpassed anything that has been seen in later times. "We are told that there were in Oxford in 1209 three thousand members of the University, in 1231 thirty thousand, in 1263 fifteen thousand, in 1350 between three and four thousand, and in 1360 six thousand." All national and local antipathies, all political tendencies, all existing schools of thought, found numerous and ardent representatives at Oxford. We are not therefore surprised to read of a succession of furious fights between the university nations' on the one hand, and between the student-body and the townspeople on the other. The monastic orders, though regarded at first by the scholastic body with vehement dislike, both in Oxford and Paris, all at last established houses in, and furnished teachers to, the University;-and it was in the Franciscan

'Newman's Office and Work of Universities, p. 267.

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monastery that Bacon prosecuted his experiments in physical science. Halls and Inns,' unendowed, but licensed by the University, were the primitive arrangement for the accommodation of students;-the first colleges, the main intention of which was to facilitate the education of poor students, were founded in the latter half of the thirteenth century. Merton and University are the first instances of such foundations.

Cambridge, which has trained so many minds of the highest order in more recent times, was comparatively uninfluential in the Middle Ages. About the year 1109 the monks of Croyland, at the instigation apparently of their abbot, Goisfred, who had studied at Orleans, opened a school in a barn at Cambridge. The scheme succeeded; the number of scholars gradually increased; and a large migration of Oxonians in the year 1209 seems to have established the rising university on a permanent basis.1

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Monasteries.-Next in importance to the universities as seats of education were the monasteries. These arose rapidly in every part of England after the Norman Conquest. William himself was a zealous promoter of the monastic institution. Scarcely did his own munificence,' says Malmesbury, or that of his nobility, leave any monastery unnoticed. Thus in his time the monastic flock increased on every side; monasteries arose, ancient in their form, but modern in building.' And in a previous passage he had said, speaking of the consequences of the Norman invasion, You might see churches rise in every village, and monasteries in the towns and cities, built in a style unknown before.' This style was of course the round arched Norman architecture, of which the specimens in England are SO numerous and so magnificent. Nearly all the monas

'See Huber's English Universities, edited by F. Newman.

teries in England, till the introduction of the mendicant orders about 1230, belonged to the Benedictine order, or some branch of it, and the devotion of the Benedictines to learning is well known. Among the houses especially distinguished for the learned men whom they produced were St. Albans, Malmesbury, Canterbury, and Peterborough. Besides the original works composed by monks at this period, we are indebted to their systematic diligence for the preservation of the ancient authors. Every large monastery had its scriptorium, in which manuscripts were kept, and the business of transcribing was regularly carried on by monks appointed for the purpose.

Paper.-Among literary helps, few have a more practically powerful influence on the circulation and stimulation of ideas than a plentiful supply of writing material. Literature was grievously hampered up to nearly the end of our period owing to the costliness and scarcity of paper. For the first seven centuries after the Christian era, the material generally used was the papyrus, imported from Egypt. But after the conquest of Egypt by the Mahomedans, towards the end of the seventh century, this importation ceased. The place of the papyrus was now supplied by parchment, in itself a much better and more durable material, but so costly that the practice became common of erasing the writing on an old parchment, in order to make room for a new work. A manuscript thus treated was called a palimpsest. When the characters had become much faded through lapse of time, the same motive-scarcity of material-led to the practice of writing a new work across the old one without resorting to erasure. A manuscript so dealt with was called a codex rescriptus. But since, in manuscripts of the first kind, the process of erasure was often imperfectly performed, and in those of the second, the old faded letters can often, with a little trouble, be distinguished beneath

the newer ones, it has happened that valuable copies, or fragments of ancient works, have in both these ways been recovered.' Paper made from linen or cotton rags is an Arabian invention; and the first paper, nearly resembling that which we now use, was made at Mecca in the year 706. The knowledge of the art soon passed into Spain, and by the Moors was communicated to the Christians. But it was not till towards the close of the thirteenth century that paper mills were established in the Christian states of Spain, whence, in the following century, the art passed into Italy, and became generally diffused.

Poetry:-Latin Poems; French Poetry; Troubadours;

Trouvères.

It may be stated broadly, that from the eleventh to the thirteenth century inclusive, the prose literature of Europe came from churchmen, the poetry from laymen. But in one direction the churchmen made incursions into the domain

of their rivals without fear of competition or reprisals. We refer to the Latin poetry of the Middle Ages. Much of this owed its existence to a spirited but hopeless endeavour-one which even Erasmus was disposed to repeat a hundred and fifty years later-to make the Latin the universal language of literature. All the existing vernacular tongues-though some were more advanced than others— were not to be compared in respect of regularity and euphony to the Latin; and the poets of the cloister preferred to write elegant hexameters and elegiacs after the model of their beloved Virgil and Ovid rather than engage in a struggle with the difficulties of their native speech in its then condition of fluidity and rapid change. One

1 The Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, at Paris, a manuscript of the Greek Testament of the highest value, written over with a work of St. Ephrem, is a case in point.