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
|