Middle Ages and Renaissance 223
the least possible expenditure of time, work, and money.
Tremendous pressure was exerted on examiners to grant the
M. A. prematurely. “Getting by” seems to have been prac-
tised as much in the thirteenth century as in the twentieth,
judging from a satirical poem of the time :
J am fiant baccalaurei
pro munere denarii
quam plures idiotae:
in artibus, et aliis
egregiis Scientiis
sunt bestiae promotae.
Jam fit magister artium
qui nescit quotas partium
de vero fundamento:
habere nomen appétit,
rem vero nec curat nec scit,
examine contento.
Now let us make these boys B.A.
as long as Dad their fees can pay
although they are but half-wits.
In all the noble Seven Arts
and Sciences, in all their parts,
the candidates have calf-wits.
Now make him magister of Arts
who doesn’t know the smallest parts
of subjects of cognition.
To have the name he’s mighty hot,
the substance simply matters not—
Exams, exhaust ambition.
Yet the university stuck to her guns; everyone must take
the two Arts degrees before proceeding B.D. or B.M. This
important principle, that a general or liberal education must
precede specialization, was largely lost sight of in America
owing to the impatience of young men in a new country to
get on with their professional training; but fifty years ago
Johns Hopkins and Harvard reestablished the ancient prin-
ciple ; and it is now followed once more by some of the leading
American universities.
No later university has occupied or can occupy so exalted
a position as that of the University of Paris in the thirteenth
to the fifteenth centuries. Feared by kings, courted by Popes,
she attracted masters and students from every part of the
civilized world, and sent them forth, with an enthusiasm for
learning, to found universities in their own countries. Ox-
ford, Louvain, and all the older universities of Germany
are her offspring. Her collective opinion, frequently sought