Life in the medieval university / by Robert S. Rait.

  • Rait, Robert S. (Robert Sangster), 1874-1936.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Life in the medieval university / by Robert S. Rait. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    continuous Latin, without any French words. Formulae for this purpose would, doubtless, soon be invented and handed down by tradition, and the precaution cannot have been of much practical value. There were plenty of grammar schools in the Middle Ages, and a clever boy was likely to find a patron and a place of education in the neigh- bourhood of his home. The grammar schools in University towns had therefore originally no special importance, but many of the undergraduates who came up at thirteen or fourteen required some training such as William of Waynflete provided for his younger demies in connexion with the Grammar School which he attached to Magdalen, or such as Walter de Merton considered desirable when he ordained that there should be a Master of Grammar in his College to teach the poor boys, and that their seniors were to go to him in any difficulty without any false shame (“ absque rubore ”). Many univer- sities extended certain privileges to boys studying grammar, by placing their names on matriculation rolls, though such matriculation was not part of the curriculum for a degree. Masters in Grammar were frequently, but not necessarily, University gradu- ates ; at Paris there were grammar mistresses as well as grammar masters. The connexion between the grammar schools and the University was ex- ceptionally close at Oxford and Cambridge, where