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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Ann As someone said, it's probably partly simply about competition for resources (housing etc): a dramatic increase in population, in which the new people are all of a specific 'type' (in this case not particularly local and from church/reasonably well-off backgrounds) often leads to such tensions. but I reckon the issues are a little more complex than that. You have to remember that the university itself is a new and evolving beast in the kate c12/c13. In England, the epicentre of the problems in Oxford (and i seem to recall Cambridge too, and perhaps Paris) is precisely this period. The schools at Oxford were closed at least twice in the c13, and the students had to disperse elsewhere; particularly large concentrations of refugees went to Northampton, Stamford and Salisbury (had history been different, we might have ended up with a Stamford U six hundred years before you!) the early c13 is when Oxford started to acquire some kind of corporate, institutional being, rather than simply being an unusually large concentration of 'freelance' teachers and students. later in that century we see the first formal colleges being founded and built on land in the city centre, perhaps partly in response to the tensions and pressures for accomodation, but presumably excarbating them, too. these institutions were large and well-endowed, they took the model of the collegiate church but built-in an academic element: a novel constitutional innovation. the issues raised by such a process will surely have involved high local politics as well as simple competition for resources. that's my reading of the situation, anyway. ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html