The intense interest in education of the be ginning of this century is well illustrated by the number of important university foundations during the first 10 years. The University of Lyons was founded in 1300-01; the University of Avignon, 1303; Orleans, 1305; Perugia, 1307; Coimbra in Portugal, 1308. Many Of these universities had existed as schools of some importance as a rule, before this, bur now were raised to universitea rank by some formal recognition, usually a Bull of the Pope. The University of Dublin for instance was thus refounded in 1320, a Bull for the erection of a university near Dublin having been granted by Clement V to Atchbiahop Lech, 11 July 1311.
The Pope as the international authority of the time,. regulated the interchange of scholars and professors and the maintenance of stand ards, and Papal Bulls required the same stand ards as those of Paris and Bologna, and some times demanded that the first professors should be graduates of one of these older universities in order that university traditions might be properly established. The Papal Decrees enacted that examinations for degrees, should be conducted under oath so as -to insure fair ness arid even dictated the details of the time to be spent in study and the' subjects, before permission would be given to come up for examination. In erecting the University of Perugia, for instance, which was in the Papal States, Pope John XXII insisted that those who were to receive the degree of• Doctor of Medicine should have devoted seven years, three of them hearing lectures, in medical science in accordance with the terms for taking the same degree at Paris or Bologna. In. erect ing the University of Cahors in his native town in France, the same Pope at the end of the first quarter of the century said' in his Bull that he wished that here as copious, refreshing fountain of science should spring up and con tinue to flow, from whose abundance all the citizens might drink, and where those desirous of education Might become imbued with knowl edge so that the cultivators of wisclom might sow seed with success and all the student body become learned and eloquent and in every way distinguished.' The first university deliberately founded as such, and not growing out of a school which bad developed to a point where a studium gen erok (the mediaeval name for University), was the natural next step, was the University of Prague. It was founded by Charles IV in 1348, who ascended the Bohemian throne only two years before. Charles had been a student at Paris and now *in memory of his student life, wished to have a copy of the university there in his Kingdom of Bohemia.' (Dollinger). He founded it with all the faculties, conferring on it all the rights, privileges and immunities common to universities. For this he had ob tained a Bull of foundation from the Pope in the preceding year, which as Laurie says, gave catholic (universal) validity to its degrees.
The Archbishop of Prague became its chancel lor. After this date, we find that important universities had usually two charters, the one papal, the other royal or imperial. The Uni versity of Prague is noteworthy as the starting point of the great German system. Before the end of the century, universities of the Parisian type were founded at Vienna, Erfurt and Heidelberg, and the University of Leipzig was founded by withdrawal of students and pro fessors from Prague early in the next cen tury, similar to earlier corresponding incidents at Paris and Oxford.
So great was the interest of the first part of this century in education that it seems literally true to say that there were more students at the universities of Europe in proportion to population at this time at any other in history. The population of the European countries was very small compared to our time. England probably did not have more than three millions, and other countries had inhabitants in the same ratio. There were many thousands of students at the English universi ties and even with all the discounting of con temporary statistics sometimes deemed neces sary, the universities of that time were un doubtedly ahead of ours in the numbers of students in attendance. University students included boys of 12 and over up to mature men well beyond 40. The boys seem to us entirely too young for university work, but it may be recalled that some of our distinguished states men of the 18th century received their college degree at 16 or even earlier, and that our present method of delaying graduate work until well beyond 20 is as yet on trial and not favorably viewed by all. The maturer students of the universities of the early 14th century were doing true university work in many cases. They were preparing to be lecturers and were often actually doing what would be called docent or seminar duties of various kinds; they were writing books and taking part in disputa tions, sharpening the wits of students, and mak ing the philosophical and theological principles clearer by elaborate distinctions. This inten sive work led to an abuse of dialectics in this century, so that the means of getting at truth, that is logical processes of vanous kinds, were often mistaken for an end in themselves. The tendency is an academic fault at all times, and technics have in the course of the development of the physical sciences in later days, shared this fate. Students for the degree of Tim Philosophy have in modern as in no times occupied themselves of ten with ;re subjects of very little interest to the pix of still less practical value. The 141)3tr did witness, however, a decadence is a. versity thinking out of great princip their application to pertinent problaas. and social, which had characterized to century.