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344 J
Maitland Anderson
faculties and their officers, students, and graduates are to be met
with in the records of the Faculty of Arts, and other contemporary
documents. That a Faculty of Divinity and Canon Law
(Facultas Canonum) existed from the commencement of the
cannot now be
University is quite certain, although its history
traced continuously. Medicine is
frequently referred to as a
subject of study, but it is doubtful if any organised faculty
existed until quite recent times.
It is noteworthy that neither in Bishop Wardlaw's charter nor
in Pope Benedict's bulls is there any mention of endowments or
of buildings. The initial wealth of the University consisted
entirely of its local and general privileges.
Its sole income for
academical purposes arose from the dues which it exacted from its
students and graduands. No provision was made for salaries to
its Masters. As Buchanan remarks, 1 the University owed its
beginning more to the willingness of learned men to offer themselves
to the profession of letters than to any public or private
patronage. The first Masters were not, of course, altogether
unrewarded, for they were allowed to hold benefices, and were
dispensed from personally performing the duties attached to them
so long as they were engaged in
teaching.
In the Faculty of Arts
this system would soon come to an end, because in a few years
the supply of competent regent Masters would be greater than the
demand. In the Faculty of Theology and Canon Law, on the
other hand, the Masters would usually be men of middle age who
derived their chief income from parish churches or other preferments.
It has been the custom of some writers on the University to
assert that these
early Masters read their lectures in a wooden
building situated where St. Mary's College now stands. This
statement has found, it is to be hoped, a last in
resting-place
the
Dictionary of National Biography? It is difficult to account for the
origin of so strange a notion. It may have arisen from the
circumstance that on May n, 1406, Bishop
Wardlaw obtained
from Henry IV. of England a safe-conduct for two ships bringing
timber from Prussia for church-building purposes. 3
Bishop Russell
might have slipped
into this
suggested that the * word church '
document instead of *
university.' *
In 1 406, however, a university
had not been thought of for St. Andrews, whereas about that time
l His/oria,]. x. c. xviii. 'Vol. lix. p. 353.
8 RotuR Scotiaf, vol. ii. p. 178.
4 Keith, Scottish Bishops, p. 28.