By the Rev. Canon Moberly. 



131 



successors the wardens, and so taking from the dean and chapter 

 the patronage which had been theirs for the last seventeen years by- 

 gift of Bishop Bingham, and putting a prior into immediate com- 

 mand of the hospital. 



The "final concord" by which this last revolution was accomplished 

 is dated February, 1261, at which time legal sanction was sought 

 for what had probably been before determined on. An agreement 

 was made before the King's J ustices, that the bishops should be 

 perpetual wardens of St. Nicholas' Hospital, and that in return for 

 this concession the dean and chapter should have the perpetual 

 nomination of one of the brethren — a privilege which they have 

 exercised ever since. Thus the nominee of the dean and chapter 

 appears to have been the first permanently resident brother in the 

 hospital. 



The same year the bishop executed another deed, founding a house 

 to be called " De Valle Scholarum beati Nicholai." The name is 

 one that tells us a good deal about the purpose and studies of the 

 new foundation. 



This thirteenth century had been, to an extent most unusual, oc- 

 cupied with thoughts of another world and theological study. The 

 institutions of the monks had grown worldly, but those of the friars 

 had supplanted them at the beginning of the century, and were the 

 avowed servants of the Papacy. A revolution also was taking place 

 in the world of knowledge. The friars were for the most part ignorant, 

 but among them were reared the famous Mendicant Schoolmen of the 

 century, and they introduced their scholastic method into theological 

 study. A strife for professors' chairs in the University of Paris 

 arose, and was not finally concluded for thirty years, when the Pope 

 settled it in favour of the Mendicants (A.D. 1259). But long 

 before this the "Scholares," i.e., the four university professors of Paris, 

 had met in a secluded valley of Auvergne, and thence taken the name 

 of Valli-Scholares. The original Valli-Scholares, then, were men 

 of the old learning as opposed to the new — those whom Mosheim 

 calls Biblicists 1 — men who deduced their conclusions from the study 



1 Mosheim, iii., p. 222. 



