December 19, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



967 



673, wrote on asti'ouomy and medicine. At 

 his school at Jarrow in Northmnbria there 

 were 600 monks in attendance besides 

 strangers from a distance. Alcuin, born 

 about the year that Bede died, went from 

 the directorship of the school at York to 

 establish the palace school for Charles the 

 Great, making the court of the emperor 

 more nearly an academy of sciences and 

 letters than has happened elsewhere in 

 history. Alfred the Great in the following 

 century also cultivated letters at his court, 

 and himself wrote on scientific as well as 

 on literary subjects. He established schools 

 throughout his dominion, including an 

 academy at Oxford. 



The traditions attributing the University 

 of Paris to Charles and Oxford Univer- 

 sity to Alfred are discredited; but the 

 schools they supported and established cer- 

 tainly did not become extinct, but devel- 

 oped into the medieval universities. The 

 curriculum of the monastic and cathedral 

 schools may appear narrow and trivial— 

 the well-known seven arts, the elementary 

 trivium — grammar, rhetoric and dialectic, 

 and the more advanced quadrivium— 

 music, arithmetic, geometry and astron- 

 omy ; but if we compare it with the curria- 

 ulum of the American or English college 

 of a few years ago we should cast no stones. 

 Indeed, when we try to picture the state of 

 affairs, the invasions of the Northmen and 

 Saracens, the wars and pillages, we can 

 but admire the spirit that maintained 

 schools and libraries in the monasteries, 

 the academies of sciences and arts of the 

 time. The Roman Church, the Holy Ro- 

 man Empire, civic life and independence 

 and finally the universities were the off- 

 spring of the so-called dark ages. 



The medical school of Salerno, whose be- 

 ginnings are traced to the ninth century, 

 seems to have descended directly from the 

 Greco-Roman period. It was secular in 

 character, extending its privileges to Jews 



and women. It is of interest to scientific 

 men that the first university should have 

 been a school of medicine, but it must be 

 admitted that it did not contribute consid- 

 erably to the advancement of science — at 

 Alexandria the living human body was dis- 

 sected, at Salerno Latin hexameters were 

 written on the urine— nor has its imper- 

 fectly known organization the interest for 

 us that attaches to the universities of 

 Bologna and Paris. 



The medieval university is certainly one 

 of the most notable institutions known to 

 history. It appeal's almost incredible that 

 10,000 students from all parts of Europe 

 should have frequented Bologna, when 

 traveling was as expensive, difficult and 

 dangerous as was the case in the thirteenth 

 century. The guilds or trades vmions of 

 the students and teachers represent a kind 

 of organization that is of peculiar interest 

 to those of us who are concerned with the 

 conduct of modern scientific societies. The 

 present period is marked by combinations 

 of labor and of capital, such as have not 

 previously existed, but the guilds of the 

 middle ages had a more complete organiza- 

 tion, and the universities of scholars have 

 no modern counterpart. It seems to me 

 that we men of science suffer both in posi- 

 tion and in character from the dependence 

 to which we submit, and that we could with 

 advantage learn from the studium generate 

 of the middle ages. 



The centers at Bologna and Paris devel- 

 oped almost simultaneously. Bologna was 

 primarily a law school and Paris a theo- 

 logical school. The former was more 

 strictly professional, and its students were 

 mostly men of maturity, already holding 

 positions in the church or state. The uni- 

 versities of students, representing different 

 nationalities, obtained control and imposed 

 their authority on the masters and on the 

 city. The school at Paris was less pro- 

 fessional in the sense that theology and 



