Traces of a University Career in Renaissance Brandenburg

This chapter reviews the intellectual and professional career of John Craig of Edinburgh (died c.1620). Craig is one of those Scottish intellectuals who travelled across continental Europe, received a higher education in the main academic and cultural centres of the Renaissance, and eventually brought back to Britain experience and knowledge gained abroad. He spent about ten years at the Brandenburg University of Frankfurt on Oder. After serving for many years as a professor of mathematics and logic, and obtaining a medical degree from Basle, he returned to Scotland. He probably practiced medicine before becoming court physician to James VI of Scotland. He followed James to England at the time of his coronation in 1603. There, he was incorporated in the College of Physicians, as well as at Oxford University.

A 1585 Oxford Ceremonial Student Oration

Orations from university ceremonial occasions provide important evidence about standards of learning and rhetoric valued in university culture. At Oxford, the most significant yearly ceremony was the comitia, or Act. Preceded by the vesperies ceremony the previous Saturday, the Monday Act marked the occasion when students incepted, that is, received their licences to become masters or doctors and members of convocation, the university’s governing body. However, there are few surviving sixteenth-century speeches from the Act, and indeed few extant orations from other Oxford ceremonial occasions. An anonymous printer published the main master of arts speeches from the Acts of 1585 and 1586 in a single volume. This chapter focuses on the oration of 1585, perhaps authored by Thomas Savile, younger brother of the more famous polymath Henry. Besides being of interest for this possible authorship, it is significant for its connections, as yet unnoted by historians, to contemporary politics and to Jean Bodin.

School Ties

In the early nineteenth century, as alumni associations quickly became commonplace, Oxford and Cambridge colleges established their own alumni magazines and societies. This raises questions such as: what kinds of friendships were created at medieval universities? How commonly did university men retain lasting connections with those they had met years ago as scolares? The answers to these questions tell us something about the medieval universities as institutions capable of forging new social identities for their members. This chapter reviews the available evidence for friendships among old members of medieval Oxford and Cambridge. Nearly all of the evidence discussed comes from previously published sources, including institutional records and official correspondence, letters from formularies and at least one real-life example of how such formulas might be employed, the theories of friendship taught in the classroom and those theories as embodied in popular handbooks for students, and the evidence of wills.

‘A Claim on Their Gratitude’

This chapter focuses on the individuals immortalized in the portrait panels in the new library of the Collège de Sorbonne. Built on a north-south axis, the long sides of the new library’s upper floor feature thirty-eight windows that not only provided necessary light but also serve as the library’s principal ornamentation. Twenty-five of the windows were embellished with portrait panels, presenting in each window an individual who had some ‘claim on the college's gratitude’. These individuals are Robert of Sorbon, William of Saint-Amour, Henry of Ghent, Godfrey [of Fontaines], Thomas of Ireland, Henry of Hesse, John of Pouilly, Peter Plaoul, John Luillier, Francis of Fon-tenay, Martin of Andocilia, John Noseret, Francis of Segovia, John of Pardo, John Jassa, John Quentin, John of La Rochelle, Gilbert Guérin, Peter Voleau, Dominic Beguin, Andrew of Château-Neuf, Gilles Boileau de Bouillon, John Charron, Gilbert Fournier, and John Standonck.

Jan Loop, Alastair Hamilton, and Charles Burnett. The Teaching and Learning of Arabic in Early Modern Europe (The History of Oriental Studies, vol. 3).

This chapter presents a review of The Teaching and Learning of Arabic in Early Modern Europe edited by Jan Loop, Alastair Hamilton, and Charles Burnett. The book features a collection of essays that grew out of a conference with a similar title held in Leiden in 2013, but represents a thoroughly updated and expanded body of work. The title words ‘and Learning’ emphasize an important feature: whereas most existing treatments of Arabic studies in this period concentrate on their pursuit in the formal setting of the universities, several of the contributors examine how the language was acquired in other contexts. Notable in this respect is Mordechai Feingold’s ‘Learning Arabic in Early Modern England’, which illustrates the importance of self-study, even in the universities.

Gaines Post, The Papacy and the Rise of Universities. Edited with a Preface by William J. Courtenay. Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance 54.

This chapter presents a review of Gaines Post’s doctoral dissertation The Papacy and the Rise of Universities. He divides his work into two parts; part one ‘The Papacy and the Constitution of the Universities’, examines how the papacy influenced the emergence of universities while part two, ‘The Papacy and the Members of the University’, details how the papacy aided the members of the university through financial support for the masters and students. What Post had accomplished in this dissertation was to compile a thorough survey of papal interaction with multiple universities from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, using primarily papal bulls as his sources. This work surveyed an impressive range of topics, addressing papal influence and intervention in the areas of licensing to teach—including the right to teach anywhere—internal development of the faculties, material support for masters and students, regulation of housing rents, and the founding of colleges.

Constructing Hidden Narratives

This chapter reviews the history of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh. The IASH, formally established in 1970, is the oldest Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Britain’s first, and Scotland’s only IAS. However, in its nearly fifty-year history, no effort has been made to tell IASH’s story. This can be partly attributed to a lack of understanding of IASs within the history of education, as well as a gap in the literature concerning IASs more generally. Investigating the history of IASH and its role in the development of postgraduate study not only adds to the scholarship on post-war Scottish higher education but also highlights the impact of academic research in Scotland since the 1960s.

The Scientific Revolution in Scotland Revisited

This chapter reviews scholarship on the Scientific Revolution in Scotland. A long-ignored manuscript of astronomical, mathematical, and natural philosophical verse and prose commentary provides an invaluable opportunity to explore many of the aspects that have drawn the attention of revisionist studies. A preliminary evaluation of the manuscript’s form, content, and production-context provides the opportunity to gain a far more nuanced understanding of the progress of intellectual change during the long Scientific Revolution as literary, philosophical, and scientific dialectic forged new paths. The manuscript highlights that, contrary to the prevailing scholarly view, not only were the new methodological approaches and phenomenological theories of the Scientific Revolution being taught and debated in early modern Scotland; key educationalists within the realm from the time of Copernicus made significant contributions to scientific progress.

Nick Haynes, Building Knowledge: An Architectural History of the University of Glasgow (Edinburgh: Historic Scotland, 2013).

This chapter presents reviews of Building Knowledge: An Architectural History of the University of Glasgow (2013) by Nick Haynes and Building Knowledge: An Architectural History of the University of Edinburgh (2017) by Nick Haynes and Clive B. Fenton. These books are published in a uniform and lavishly illustrated format by the body responsible for Scotland’s built heritage. The authors, who are primarily architectural historians, focus on style, patronage, costs, building methods, and other topics of architectural history, and use the papers of individual architects as well as university archives. Their work is also an important contribution to the history of universities, as the evolution of buildings reflects the changing demands of university education, and the place of universities within the urban community.

Paul W. Knoll, ‘A Pearl of Powerful Learning’: The University of Cracow in the Fifteenth Century.

This chapter presents a review of Paul W. Knoll’s ‘A Pearl of Powerful Learning:’ The University of Cracow in the Fifteenth Century. The book covers topics such as the foundation, the urban context, institutional issues, all the faculties, intellectual trends, and libraries. Not the least of this book’s accomplishments is its digestion and synthesis, in English, of a large body of important Polish scholarship. In addition to its specific foci, Knoll’s scholarship contributes an invaluable case study to a growing literature that undercuts the stereotype of the late-medieval university as an institution in decline. Indeed, the University of Cracow was not alone in its vitality and socio-political engagement.