william t. costello, sj - The School of Literature, Communication, and ...

THE FRAMEWORK OF SCHOLASTICISM 13
recent masters were available in print, and to prepare oneself for
the it
disputations, was simpler and more comfortable to repair
to a tutor's chambers and borrow his marked copy. Briefly, as
scholasticism, the philosophy of the schools, became more and
more the philosophy of the library, the lecturer in the schools
became correspondingly outmoded.
The lectures themselves were either public or private. The
of the
public lectures (in scholis) were held under the auspices
University in the Old Schools, a series of buildings near the present
Senate House. Private lectures were those held by the college
in the dining hall, the chapel, or in a tutor's rooms. There were
by statute four public lectures a week in theology, civil law, medicine,
and mathematics, while lecturers in language, philosophy,
dialectics, and rhetoric were held to five lectures, "unless a feast
day intervene/' 17 The lectures ran for an hour, from seven until
eight in the morning. Anyone who has experienced the damp cold
of a winter's morning at Cambridge will not want to look further
than to the early hour of the exercise, held in an unheated and
gloomy barn, for the falling off of attendance and "the uncumly
Hemminge 8c hauking at publick lectures . . ." 1S These early
morning faces had to show somehow how unwillingly they had
crept to the schools.
In the will (161 1) of John Cowell, Master of Trinity Hall, there
is provision "towards the perpetuall maintenance of an logic lec-
ture . . ." 19 in his college. The will is important for two reasons:
first, an experienced and very able master expresses his faith in
the lecture system, and, secondly, he gives the details of its ideal
operation. Cowell's logic lecture was to be read "fower dayes every
week at the least in Term time, and two hours every day viz:
from six to eight in the . . morning ." The first hour "I will to
be bestowed in the examining the former days lecture, & In in-
structing the auditors, how to make use of logique by objecting
& answering one the other." This "repetitio" as it was called,
was to be followed by a "praelectio" that is, a second hour ". . . to
be bestowed in delivering a new lecture, in such deliberate man-
ner, that the auditors may take it by yr penn
from his mouth .
. ."
Extending the lecture to two hours and joining it to the repetition
was a step in the right direction, for heretofore student participa-
tion seems to have been largely confined to separate disputations
and discussions with one's tutor or chamber-fellow.
When Cowell speaks of taking down the lecture by "penn from
his mouth" he is describing the practice called "diting." The ad*