The Rise of the University and the Formation of Student Resistance
Although ancient complex educational systems existed in China, India, Greece, and other places, universities as they exist today across the globe descend from two specific mother institutions in Bologna and Paris.1 Inspired by Arab scholars working in Spain, motivated youths and scholars banded together into academic guilds to share ideas, to study, and to discuss new trends in mathematics, astronomy, and literature in twelfth-century Europe.2 Over the next two centuries professional academic guilds sprang up throughout Europe, and European imperialism ensured their establishment around the world as well.
Charters indicate that although numerous European schools existed prior to the twelfth century, these institutions catered only to very young boys training to be priests, monks, clerics, or literate laymen, focusing on fundamental skills of literacy and theological training.3 Thus not until this early renaissance did Europe see the first phase of the evolution of âhigher education,â when an explosion of new knowledge allowed forâindeed demandedâa secular education in medicine and the law as well as in liberal arts and theology. Education soon became a fashionable way to rid wealthy homes of boisterous young men, while their less fortunate sisters generally remained âhome-schooled,â if they were educated at all.4
Universities originally referred simply to informal and rather loose guilds of scholars and students; the word universitas signaled only a collection of students, similar to the guilds formed by weavers or carpenters. As students united, though, they realized they could affect their living conditions, and through collective action lower the costs of room and board. In Bologna, they successfully demanded reduced prices for books and supplies. Prior to the formation of such unions, townspeople, capitalizing on high rent and food costs, often victimized individual students, but with the recognition of a collective power, documents reveal that students began demanding their own terms with towns. As student collectives expanded in numbers, cities grew increasingly dependent on the revenues of universities, and students, realizing their greater bargaining power, found they could threaten en masse to abandon a town if they did not receive fair economic treatment. Not infrequently when students were stymied, they would simply pick up and move to other towns more willing to offer them better terms.
Universities were originally not founded as safe havens for the pursuit of knowledge but begun by the sons of the well-to-do and rising middle class for the express purpose of wielding economic power and for generating financial leverage against host towns and cities. Thus the social powers of and behind modern universities have deep roots.5 As a collective of students, the University of Paris, for instance, threatened to withdraw from the city in 1200 and successfully extorted significant legal and economic concessions from the city; the events leading up to the threat centered around an already classic type of âtown-and-gownâ altercation: shortly after the cathedral school became a university, a studentâs servant was ejected from a Paris tavern after insulting the innkeeper and the innkeeperâs wine.6 In protest, the servantâs master and a contingent of other students rushed into the establishment and attacked the innkeeper and a few inebriated locals; responding to the innkeeperâs call for aid, town officials and a number of enraged townies retaliated by hunting down and viciously attacking the students, beating a number of them to death. Outraged, the university collective demanded justice from the sovereign and threatened to relocate, charging that the city was unfairly persecuting students. The king sided with the collective, imprisoned the city provost, and granted a charter that exempted the students and the masters of the university from lay jurisdiction, giving them the privileges of clergy and freeing them from local taxes and prosecution. Thus the townâs violent attack on the students resulted in a tremendous increase in the rights and privileges of the university, and the struggle resulted in a radical realignment of local power.7 Such events became a classic formula for âgainfulâ medieval student actions, and similar actions would occur in other European cities and again in Paris many times over. Of course, tensions did not ease between universities and their host cities after such events. Repeatedly, citizens would bear student class âentitlementâ and unruliness only so far, retaliate, and then face further sanctions for their actions.8
Students in Bologna founded the university as a guild, which Emperor Frederick Barbarossa officially acknowledged in 1158 by granting protection to those doing scholarship there. The universityâs power over Bologna was at first primarily economic. In 1217, for example, the students removed the university from Bologna to a nearby city to protest against the formerâs unfair economic practices and did not return until 1220, when city officials agreed to tax reform and to enforce decreases in local costs of room and board.9 During this same strike, students complained that their masters treated them unethically and agreed to return only if the universityâs masters would abide by rules demanding that, among other things, masters would no longer be tardy to or skip lectures. The teachers complied with the demands; thus in 1220 in Bologna students learned the extent of their power was not limited to local trade. Not only could they demand fair economic treatment, but they could also as a collective demand educational reforms to their own institution. Such straightforward student power may be hard to imagine in the modern developed world, but that is in large part due to the carefully orchestrated reorganization of power relations within universities by administrators and professors who realized at some point that they had a longer relationship to the university, and could forge alliances with the government. Governments, too, were beginning to learn how to negotiate with the new universities, and they, unlike many of the younger scholars, were politically adept. In 1562, for example, Pope Pius IV generously donated a building to the University of Bologna, and while the gift was generous and sizable, it also effectively neutralized the threat of students moving the university from the city in the future.
Of course the students of the early universities hailed from different social classes and regions than the residents of the towns housing the collectives, and these differences, combined with the increasing privileges granted European universities by state and church, ensured further conflict. Not invested economically or socially in the towns in which they studied, students of medieval Europe, much like university students today, felt neither personal nor social pressures to conform to their foster townsâ notions of proper behavior or proper respect for person or property. When a university was founded in Vienna in 1365, Duke Rudolf IV instituted severe punishments to dissuade town-and-gown wars, predicting that violent conflicts would ensue. He proclaimed, for example, that if a nonstudent attacked a student, and the student lost a body part in the assault, then the non-university assailant was to suffer the loss of a similar member as punishment.10 Regardless of initial causes, in scrapes between students and townies, European university students generally received preferential treatment by the state. And so, as disturbances between universities and their host towns continued, universities gradually gained more and more power, and towns continued to lose ground to the student collectives.
A series of violent town-and-gown clashes rocked Cambridge and Oxford in the mid-fourteenth century, resulting in both the deaths of a number of students and the universitiesâ subsequent economic control over both towns. The first two decades of the century witnessed a series of bloody but relatively minor clashes between students and townspeople in Cambridge, but in 1322 bailiffs and many citizens of Cambridge, fed up with the havoc privileged students wreaked on the town, commenced a large-scale assault on the university. Armed with clubs and swords, they attacked the campus and the student dormitories, severely injuring many students and destroying much of their personal property. The university immediately took steps to withdraw from Cambridge, and the sympathetic king had the principals from the town and several hundred townspeople tried for the attack. For decades afterward, calm generally prevailed, though a few small riots, some started by students and others by townspeople, disturbed the relative peace and kept the relations between the university and the city strained. The Peasantsâ Revolt of 1381 was a more violent encounter. In this uprising the mayor of Cambridge and a contingent of townspeople banded together with peasants to attack university students with swords, axes, pitchforks, and scythes. The bloody onslaught ended only when a neighboring aristocratâs army engaged the mob, quelling the riot. The king responded to the Cambridge battle by giving the university complete authority over the townâs market economy.11 Similar to the events and outcome of local violence against the University of Paris over a hundred years earlier, the conflict at Cambridge resulted in a substantial increase in the universityâs power over the town.
At the turn of the thirteenth century, the strained relationship between the town of Oxford and the university residing there erupted in a series of deadly exchanges. It culminated with thousands of students roaming the streets, randomly attacking hapless citizens and local sheriffs who would not stop the marauding students out of fear of state retaliation. For years the town had complained of the universityâs autocratic rule, and of the violent altercations and riots that occurred annually; the citizens charged that the students consistently flouted city laws, repeatedly destroyed property, and harmed them physically. In the face of almost constant complaints, the university threatened to leave the town, but King Edward demanded the university stay, reaffirming its rights and privileges over the town. By the end of the thirteenth century, it was clear that against the university the town of Oxford could not win.
The notorious town-and-gown mĂȘlĂ©e, the St. Scholasticaâs Day Riot, took place at Oxford on February 10, 1354. The violence began in an inn where a group of students disparaged the quality of the wine theyâd been drinking and insulted the innkeeper; as Oxford historian Antony Wood recounts, âThe vintner giving them stubborn and saucy language, they threw the wine and vessel at his head.â12 Following the studentsâ assault, the merchantâs alarmist friends rang a nearby church bell to muster a group of townspeople who, armed with bows, ruthlessly fell upon a completely different group of students loitering in the neighborhood. Hearing of the townspeopleâs ambushing of students, the university chancellor rushed to the scene to stop the violence, and was himself greeted with a flurry of arrows. Indignant at the assault on his person, the chancellor responded by raising a band of students, and together they attacked the bellicose townsfolk in a pitched battle that lasted into the night. The next day a mob of townsmen with bows and arrows, axes, and swords gathered at a second church, ambushing some students passing by, killing one student outright and injuring several others.
Sensing serious trouble brewing and wanting to get ahead of it, the mayor quickly rode to Woodstock to see the king, to explain the townâs position on the violence to him, and to voice chronic grievances with the students. While the mayor was gone, however, the angry townspeople went into the neighboring countryside to enlist more muscle (those living in the country had no great fondness for students either), and the combined forces attacked the students and scholars in Beaumont fields. Recording the event, Wood writes,
[Students were] wounded mortally, others grievously and the rest used basely. All of which being done without any mercy, caused an horrible outcry in the town and ⊠divers Scholars issued out armed with bows and arrows in their own defense. ⊠Then entered the town by the west gate about two thousand countrymen ⊠of which the Scholars having notice, and being unable to resist so great a force and fierce a company, they withdrew themselves to their lodgings. The countrymen advanced crying, âSlea, Slea. ⊠Havock, Havock. ⊠Smyt fast, give gode knocks!â ⊠They broke open five Inns, or Hostles of Scholars with fire and sword ⊠and such Scholars as they found in said Halls or Inns they killed or maimed. Their books and all their goods they spoiled, plundered and carried away. All their victuals, wine and other drink they poured out; their bread, fish etc. they trod under foot.13
The mob attacking the students and scholars ceased their rampage as night fell, but the next day the violence grew worse, âwith hideous noises and clamours they came and invaded the scholarsâ houses ⊠and those that resisted them and stood upon their defense (particularly some chaplains) they killed or else in a grievous sort wounded.â14 Many students and scholars were killed; some â[carried] their entrails in their hands in a most lamentable manner,â while others were scalped: âThe crowns of some chaplains, that is, all the skin so far as the tonsure went, these diabolical imps flayed off in scorn of their clergy.â15 What began with an insult given by a drunken student to an innkeeper, or by an innkeeper to a student, in serving the wine he did, turned into the worst riot the town had ever seen. For a while, enrollment at Oxford University was dramatically diminished. But the town too was to suffer greatly for the attacks, as the king awarded economic authority over it to the university in retribution.
As a result of the violence, Edward III imprisoned in the Tower of London a number of the townsmen who led the attacks, and significantly increased the power of the university, granting Oxford University sovereignty over the town and, most importantly, its trade. Additionally, the mayor and bailiffs of Oxford were forced to swear an annual oath observing the supremacy of the university over the town. The church was not to stand idly by, either, with such an opportunity to display power: the bishop of Lincoln quickly placed the town under interdiction, and in addition to the ecclesiastical censure denying the town sacraments, he further commanded the mayor and city officials attend an annual mass at St. Maryâs Church every St. Scholasticaâs Day to commemorate the slain students, a practice that continued well into the nineteenth century.
Thus although the cost in human life and property was high, the massacre was enormously beneficial for the university in the long run. Such struggles, though on a lesser scale, between universities and hosting towns occurred all over Europe throughout the Middle Ages, generally with similar results; local riots erupted from insignificant altercations and escalated in size and violence until the state was forced to intercede, which in most cases meant punishment for the towns and new privileges for the students, as well as increased economic and political power for the universities as institutions.
Medieval conflicts between universities and towns, regardless of initial causes, were primarily and explicitly struggles for physical and political power. Often sons of privilege, students had recourse to different political channels than mayors and bailiffs did, but it was their numbers and group cohesion that allowed them to succeed where individuals alone could do little. In the modern world, the power that universities hold does not appear to rest primarily with the student body; but this myopia might indicate a lack of historical perspective and the sophistication of institutional strategies of student control and domination. Generally, university students (or a significant portion of them) are still directly connected to avenues of power, material wealth, and the classes of citizens who can effect institutional, political, or social change. This trend is especially true in developing nations in which upper-class youth make up the majority of university students, but it is also true of developed nations in which the offspring of the middle and upper classes form a substantial part of the university and in which the entire student body can represent a powerful block of consumers. Resources of powerâeconomic, political, legal, and socialâexist for university students today, just as they did for Oxford students during the reign of Edward III, th...
