SITY OF FRAxCE.
The granting of degrees was the mode in which the university reproduced itself. A degree is the recognition of a student having made a certain advance in his career, the degree of doctor or master, in its original idea, entitling the person on whom it was conferred to teach within the limits of ,1 e university. Toward the end of the 13th c., pope Nicholas I. granted to the university of Paris the right of endowing its graduates with the power of teaching everywhere; and this universal degree, making the recipient of it a member of the community of the learned throughout Christen dom, became a link of connection between the universities of Europe. The designa tion of bachelor, borrowed from the term indicating the probationary stage of knight hood, and implying the lowest stage of university honor, or the condition of an imper fect graduate, was first introduced in the 13th c. in the university of Paris, where the bachelor, though intrusted with certain tutorial functions, possessed no legislative power. The right of teaching (regendt) belonged to the master, doctor, or other perfect graduate; and a period of necessary regency was generally fixed, during which the graduates were bound to teach, and after the expiry of which they were at liberty to become non regents. It, in the course of time, became the practice to endow a select number of the graduates as public authorized teachers; these privileged and salaried graduates were designated professors, and instruction by professors more or less supplanted the original plan of teaching by graduates.
The poverty of a proportion of the students, and the desirableness of domestic super intendence, suggested the institution of halls endowed with property and corporate privileges, calltali•olleges. Though originally a provision for poor scholars, they soon assumed the character of boarding-houses for all classes of students, where they were privately trained and prepared for the public lectures. Colleges seem to have been first introduced in Paris, where most of them became appropriated to a particular faculty. or department of a faculty. The college of the Sorbonne, founded in 1250, came to lie in a great measure identified with the theological faculty. Regent masters were named by the faculties as lecturers in the colleges, attendance on whom was made equivalent to attendance on the public courses in the schools of the university, and eventually the college lectures were thrown open to all members of the university; and it became obli gatory in the faculty of arts, and usual in the other faculties, to become a member of some college.
The two highest university officers have generally been the rector and the chancellor, the former being the head of the university ia everything except the granting of degrees, which are conferred by the latter as the fountain of honor, Besides the division into faculties, there was in most of the continental universities a division of the graduates and students into nations, in respect of the countries to which they belonged. In Paris, the faculty of arts was divided into four nations, known as French, Picard, Norman, and German or English; and after the 13th c., these four nations, under their respective procurators. and the three subsequently added faculties under their deans, constituted the seven component parts of the university. The rector, with flie procurators and deans, formed a court having cognizance of all matters relating to discipline, from which there was an appeal to the university, and from thence to the parliament of Paris. In Bologna, after faculties of philosophy, medicine, and theology had been added to those of civil and canon law, the students were classed as ultramontani and citrarnontani, and each class divided into nations, presided over by their several counselors or procurators.
The university, with modifications called for by the altered circumstances of society, has survived the revolutions of seven centuries. At present Europe possesses about 100 universities, some dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, and others of various degrees of antiquity, including some founded in the present century. About 30 belong to Ger many, and 20 to Italy; Holland, Belgium, Scandinavia, main, Portugal, Russia, and Greece contain among them about 30 universities. England has four—two ancient, Oxford and Cambridge; and two modern, London and Dilrham. Scotland has the four universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh: and Ireland has Trin ity college, Dublin, and the three affiliated colleges of the Queen's university.