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530 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
the few Cluniac or Carthusian monks or Premonstratensian
canons who came to study at either university.
5. Curricula in Universities and Inns of Court and of Chancery
With the rise ofthe universities the monk's carrel in the quiet
seclusion ofthe cloister (PL 109 a) was no longer the chiefseat
of learning. It had been replaced by the master's chair set in the
public forum ofthe schools; and with the change a revolution
took place in the conditions under which learning was pur'
sued. The educational method developed at the universities
was one of question and answer. Lectures prepared the student
for engagement in disputations and determinations appnv
priate to the successive stages of his course. Every course of
study had an immediate professional objective, the licence to
teach (licencia docendi). Whatever ultimate career a scholar
might have in view, he was required to deliver lectures at given
stages in his academical progress. If he reached the degree of
master in any faculty, he was under oath to lecture for two years
as a necessary regent before he was free to leave the university.
The original organization of a curriculum and the institu'
tion of a system of degrees were effected at Oxford and Canv
bridge by masters who for the most part were familiar with the
precedents set by Paris. Degrees were granted in Grammar,
Arts, Theology, Law (canon and civil), Medicine, and, from
the fifteenth
century, Music. Study of the Seven Liberal Arts
formed the broad foundation on which the other subjects were
based. It was divided, in accordance with ancient tradition,
into two parts, the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and
the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music).
Grammar and rhetoric, which covered classical literature, had
received enlightened attention under the stimulus ofthe twelfth'
century renaissance; but the intense concentration on logic and
philosophy which characterized the study of arts during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries resulted in a depression of
linguistic and literary studies and a lowered standard oflatmity
until the influence ofltalian humanism reached England in the
fifteenth century. Meanwhile Donatus and Priscian reigned in