professorships and academic reform at cambridge: 1488-1520

Professorships and Academic Reform at Cambridge: 1488-1520Author(s): Damian Riehl LeaderSource: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Summer, 1983), pp. 215-227Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539947 .

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Sixteenth Century Journal XIV, No. 2 (1983)

Professorships and Academic Reform at Cambridge: 1488-1520

Damian Riehl Leader Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

GRADUATES OF MEDIEVAL ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES rarely pursued careers in teaching, seeking instead preferment in the church or govern- ment service. The university assured itself of an adequate supply of lecturers by imposing the statutory duty of "necessary regency" on all newly created masters, whereby they were obliged by oath to lecture for one or two years after graduation.' The regents were paid directly by their students for these lectures, usually 12d. or 18d. a term.2

The decline of this necessary regency system in the faculties of arts at Oxford and Cambridge was long considered a striking example of late medieval educational decay. The records of the Congregations at both universities indicate that by the late fifteenth century graduates in the faculties of arts were frequently excused from delivering all or part of their regent lectures, and scholars were dispensed with at- tending them.3 Serious study seems to have moved out of the university lecture halls and into the colleges, and statutory requirements for degrees in arts were enforced with increasing laxity. This trend reached its culmination in 1518, when all graduates in the Oxford faculty of arts were excused their regencies "because nobody attends those lecturing."4 These records have often been used to demonstrate both the moribund state of university scholasticism and the significance of the collegiate lectureships of Magdalen and Corpus Christi Colleges at Ox- ford and of Christ's, St. John's, and Jesus College at Cambridge in re- vivifying the arts and providing a secure home for the new learning.

'One year at Cambridge and two years at Oxford: Documents relating to the Uni- versity and Colleges of Cambridge, ed. Her Majesty's Commissioners (London: HMSO, 1852), I: 381, no. 134 (hereafter cited as Docs. I); Statuta Antiqua Universitatis Oxoni- ensis, ed. S. Gibson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931), p. 54. These requirements could, and were, varied by dispensations granted by the respective Congregations.

2Statuta Antiqua, pp. 131-132; Cambridge masters were prohibited from lecturing without charge, Docs. I, 391, no. 155.

3See Grace Book A, ed. S.M. Leathes, Luard Memorial Series I (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, 1897); Grace Book B, Part I, ed. M. Bateson, Luard Memorial Series 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903); Grace Book B, Part II, ed. M. Bate- son, Luard Memorial Series 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905); Grace Book r, ed. H.G. Searle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908); Oxford Uni- versity Archives, Registers G and H. 4Register H, f. 6v.

0361-0160/83/$ 1.00 Copyright ? 1983, The Sixteenth Century Journal



216 Cambridge Academic Reform

More recent scholarship, however, has shown that this view is in- adequate. A systematic review of graces (dispensations) given by Ox- ford's Congregation for students in the faculty of arts between the mid-fifteenth century and 1520 has shown that the situation was one of evolution rather than decline.5 Graces were used by Congregation to demand specific lectures from selected graduates who were best able to serve the intellectual needs of the faculty of arts. In this manner a flexible response to a changing academic climate was achieved outside of the quickly out-dated university statutes.6 The acts and disputations of the faculty of arts continued in full vigor and complemented these assigned lectures.7 These university efforts were supplemented as well by the free public lectures offered by Magdalen College (1459) in philosophy and by Corpus Christi (1517) in Greek and the humanities and Cardinal Wolsey's lectureships in the humanities, first given in the autumn of 1518.8

Although no comparative study has been published on Oxford and Cambridge for this transitional period, an examination of the statutes and Grace Books shows a very different response by Cambridge to the same needs. Rather than relying on graces to obtain lectures on a year- ly basis, Cambridge began in the late fifteenth century to endow salaried professorships to provide the necessary instruction for students in the faculty of arts.9 By 1519 the younger university had salaried lecturers in logic, the humanities, philosophy, the quadrivium, and Greek, offering courses that were both free and obligatory (save Greek). These professorships had the advantage of assuring both supply and quality as the lecturers were selected by Congregation for their ability to fulfill specific needs.

UJ.M. Fletcher, "The Teaching of Arts at Oxford, 1400-1520," Paedagogica His- torica 7 (1967): 417-454.

6Fletcher, p. 426. 7Fletcher, p. 430. "Statutes of the Colleges of Oxford (London: HMSO, 1853), II, Magdalen College, p.

47; Corpus Christi College, pp. 48-54. Cardinal Wolsey's free public lectures were financed on an annual basis and were not endowed (in spite of frequent pleas from the university) until the founding of Cardinal College in 1525. Before that date the lecturers, who included such luminaries as John Clement, Thomas Lupset, and Juan Luis Vives, were housed in Corpus Christi College. See Epistolae Academicae 1508-1596, ed. W.T. Mitchell, Oxford Historical Society, new series no. 26 (Oxford: Oxford Historical Society, 1980), pp. 74-77, 81, 83-84, 90-91, 95-96, 105-106, 116-119, 154-156, 165-168, 174-175, 188-189, and 234-237.

9This was first noticed by M. Bateson in Grace Book B, Part II, p. xix, and more re- cently by J.M. Fletcher in "Change and Resistance to Change," History of Universities 1 (1981): 13; F.D. Logan in "The Origins of the So-Called Regius Professorships," in Renaissance and Renewal in Christian History, Studies in Church History 14 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), pp. 271-279 seems unaware of the extent of these earlier professorships; In this article I use "professorship" to mean any salaried university teaching appointment.



Leader 217

More importantly, it will be seen that these Cambridge professorships were not only an administrative innovation but signalled a change in intellectual content and purpose. Almost without exception, these lectures were established, endowed, and delivered by members of the reforming, humanist circles that promoted a redirection in studies, including neo-classical Latin, Greek, and science, to serve a more Scripturally based theology. The seminal figures in this renaissance were Lady Margaret Beaufort and her chaplain, Bishop John Fisher, university chancellor and guiding light of Christ's College, Queens', and St. John's College. But others, less well known, were involved: a generation of young scholars, many of whom were affiliated with these colleges, and lay lawyers in the royal service who patronized the new learning at Cambridge and elsewhere. All of these men (and woman) re- oriented both the content and form of the studies, so that the Royal In- junctions of 1535 and the founding of the Regius professorships in 1540 were less a real change than an apparent one.

The idea of salaried lectureships was not a Cambridge creation but rather appeared first in several stillborn efforts at Oxford. In 1432 John, duke of Bedford, told Gilbert Kymer, M.D. and then chancellor of Ox- ford, of his intention to endow a lecture in "septem arcium triumque philosophiarum." The Oxford Congregation quickly followed this up with several letters urging him to carry out his plan.10 Although he never did, the university seems to have convinced his brother Hum- phrey, duke of Gloucester, to fulfill his brother's promise.11 Duke Hum- phrey did little, and in 1436 the university again asked Duke Humphrey to provide sufficient maintenance for this lecture in the faculty of arts.12 In spite of Gloucester's other benefactions to Oxford, he never acceeded to these requests.

The founding of salaried lectureships in arts reappeared in a different form in 1453 when Congregation considered "whether it would seem expedient to the university that five (or fewer) regents be hired to lecture on the arts which are not being given by the necessary regents." 13 But this idea was never implemented.

Oxford's third unrealized attempt occurred in March 1482, when Edward IV founded a lectureship in theology. Oxford wrote the king a letter of thanks, promising that a special collect for him would be in-

10Epistolae Academicae Oxoniensis, ed. H. Anstey, Oxford Historical Society 35 (Oxford: Oxford Historical Society, 1898), I: 81-83, 94-95, and 106-107.

"Epistolae Academicae I: 107-108. '2Epistolae Academicae I: 139-140; See also the letter to Henry VI in 1442, pp.

210-211, where the university claims that all arts lectures are delivered without fee, a situation contradicted by all other university records.

"Register of Congregation 1448-1463, ed. W.A. Pantin and W.T. Mitchell, Oxford Historical Society, new series 22 (Oxford: Oxford Historical Society, 1972), p. 153.




cluded in the annual mass at the beginning of the school year.14 Edward died the next year, and nothing more is heard of this professorship.

No false starts such as these are known at Cambridge. Their first professorships were founded by statute in 1488, when Congregation authorized that three regent masters in arts be chosen annually at the end of each summer term to lecture ordinarily in the public schools.15 The first of the three masters was to lecture on "libros humanitatis" to students in their first two years, the second on logic to third year students, and the third master on philosophy to fourth year students and bachelors. These three lectures were to last at least an hour, and each lecturer was to receive 26s. 8d. per term, payable by the masters of colleges and the principals of halls.16

This revolutionary statute not only introduced a novel method of financing but signalled a curricular change as well. Previously the Cambridge undergraduate spent his first two years on Aristotle's Organon and medieval terminist logic, and his third and fourth years (after becoming a sophista generalis, one who actively participated in disputations) were then given to natural philosophy (and to a lesser extent, moral philosophy and metaphysics.)17 With this new statute the emphasis moved away from logic as the foundation study and towards the hazily defined "libros humanitatis," to which the young scholar was to devote two years. This was not a blanket condemnation of scholasticism but rather a redirection of young artists towards more humanistic goals within an increasingly eclectic academic environment. The new statute did not abolish necessary regency lectures but supplemented them and made them less necessary for most undergraduate students.

This new curricular emphasis was reiterated by another statute, passed in 1495, which listed the requirements for the degree of bachelor of arts.18 The students were to hear in the public schools "Terence" for two years, logic for one, and natural philosophy or metaphysics for one

"Epistoale Academicae Oxoniensis, ed. H. Anstey, Oxford Historical Society 36 (Oxford: Oxford Historical Society, 1898), II, 478-479.

"5An ordinary lecture was an authoritative commentary on a text, delivered by a master wearing the prescribed habit, between six and nine a.m., in the public schools.

16Docs. I, 361, no. 87, "Item statutum est quod singulis annis prope finem termini aestivalis eligantur in futurum per regentes tres magistri in artibus regentes ad legen- dum ordinarie in scholis publicis pro forma scholarium in eadem facultate studentium, quorum unus legat pro scholaribus primi et secundi anni libros humanitatis, secundus legat logicam scholaribus pro forma tertii anni, tertius vero legat libros philosophiae pro forma scholarium quarti anni et baccalaureorum, et quod quilibet eorum observet dictam lecturam communiter per unam horam, recepturus pro stipendio suo quolibet termino xxvi. solidos et viii. denarios per custodes seu magistros collegiorum ac hos- pitorum principales solvendos."

"7Docs. I, 384, no. 139 (by 1390); M.B. Hackett, The Original Statutes of Cambridge University (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 297-299.

I8Docs I, 384-385, no. 140 (1495).



Leader 219

year. In short, it was the same program as was given by the three professors. It should also be noted that "Terence" is here used synono- mously with "humanitas" and refers to Publius Terentius Afer, the playwright, and not Terentius Varro, the encyclopaedic writer.19 The comedian, although widely known in the middle ages, also enjoyed a reputation during the early English renaissance as a cornucopia of good Latin style.20 Unfortunately, we have no clear evidence of the content of this lecture in the humanities other than that Terence was a frequent text. It is clear, however, that Cambridge as a corporate body was giving its strong assent to neo-classical Latin style and doing it in a more permanent manner than Oxford.

It is difficult to trace the development of these three professorships. Congregation kept no record of their selection process for these appointments, and I have found no specific accounts by the masters of the colleges and principals of halls who paid the lecturers. The university records are useful only when the Terence lecture was given in vacation (for which there was no statutory procedure for payment), and it was the proctors who paid the 26s. 8d. to the lecturers.

These payments by the proctors listed in the Grace Books establish that the first lecturer in Terence was Caius Auberinus. Of Auberi- nus we know surprisingly little.21 Styled "poeta," he was an Italian resident in Cambridge by at least 1483, when he was first employed by the university to compose letters, occasional work which he did until 1504. That his letters were directed to the more important royal and ecclesiastical officials indicates an appreciation by Congregation of Italianate style. Unfortunately, none of these letters survives. Of Auberinus's learning we know only that he was a master of a foreign university, as he was so incorporated at Cambridge in 1490-1491.22 He does not seem to appear in any other English records, or in the letters and literary documents of the period; he bequeathed no books and was patronized by no other institution. In spite of this anonymity and the probable modesty of Auberinus's achievements, his influence on a

19cf. Grace Book B, Part I, p. 232 (1507-1508); Grace Book B, Part II, p. 114 (1523-1524); Grace Book r, p. 12 (1502-1503).

20There were copies of Terence in almost all of the fifteenth-century libraries of Ox- ford and Cambridge and many of the sixteenth-century private libraries of Cambridge men. See M.H. Smith, "Some Humanist Libraries in Early Tudor Cambridge," The Six- teenth Century Journal 5 (1974), 15-34, and L. Jardine, "The Place of Dialectic Teach- ing in Sixteenth-Century Cambridge," Studies in the Renaissance 21 (1974), 31-62; John Anwykyll used Terence as a basic source of good style in his Compendius totius gram- maticae (Oxford, 1483); John Colet's statutes for St. Paul's School prescribed the use of "veray Romayne tonge which in the tyme of Tully and Salust and Virgill and Terence was usid." See J.H. Lupton, Life of John Colet, 2. ed. (London: G. Bell, 1909), p. 279.

21A.B. Emden, Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500 (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), p. 23; R. Weiss, Humanism in England, 3. ed. (Oxford: Blackwells, 1967), p. 163.

22Grace Book A, p. 202 (1485-1486); Grace Book B, Part I, p. 30 (1490-1491).




generation of Cambridge scholars as the only Italian of humanistic as- pirations lecturing at Cambridge between 1487 and 1504 must not be underestimated.23

Auberinus, who doubtless had been supporting himself by lecturing since his arrival in 1483, was given special attention by the university in April 1486 when he was voted four marks (2 x 26s. 8d.) by Congregation for lecturing.24 No records of disbursements exist for 1486-1487, but in 1487-1488 Caius was paid 26s. 8d. for each of the three terms.25 The following year the new statute establishing the three lectureships was passed, and Auberinus henceforth needed to be paid by the proctors only if he lectured in vacation. This happened in 1491-1492, 1492-1493 ("pro lectura puplica") and 1499-1504.26 After that year he disappears from the university records.

During these years the other two lectureships, also financed through the colleges and hostels, go unmentioned in the proctors' accounts. There are, however, occasional payments during these years that are not specifically related to any of the three lectureships. In 1496 John Fisher, M.A. and then Master of Michaelhouse, was paid 5s. 8d. for lecturing in vacation and 26s. 8d. for lecturing in Christmas term.27 It seems likely that he was a lecturer in the humanities. In 1499-1500 John Fawne, M.A. 1497, fellow of Queens' College, future vice-chancellor (1512-1514) and Lady Margaret preacher (1515), was paid lOs. "pro lectura sua ordinaria."28 He was later to become a friend of Erasmus and was patronized by Richard Foxe, bishop of Winches- ter and founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.29 The following vacation Thomas Patenson of Pembroke Hall, then junior proctor, received 2s. 4d. "pro ordinario."30 He later founded a scholarship at Christ's College and donated several books to Pembroke, including the Epistolae of Pico della Mirandola.31

23He was not, however, the first Italian with renaissance training to teach at Cam- bridge. Lorenzo Traversagni di Savona lectured on rhetoric and ethics in 1476-1477, and in theology in 1478-1479, and composed a Nova rhetorica while at Cambridge. Stephano Surigone, a canonist and "poet laureate" who traveled extensively, taught rhetoric at Oxford between c. 1454 and 1464, and was D.Cn.L. of Cambridge in 1475- 1476. See J. Ruysschaert, "Lorenzo Guglielmo Traversagni de Savone," Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 46 (1953), 195-210; Weiss, pp. 138-139; and Emden, pp. 566-567.

24Grace Book A, p. 202 (1485-1486). 21Grace Book A, pp. 219-220 (1487-1488). 26Grace Book B, Part I, pp. 44, 51, 138, and passim (1491-1504). In 1499 he received

20s. for lecturing during feast days in Michaelmas term, as well as during the Long Va- cation, p. 138.

27Grace Book B, Part I, pp. 104-105 (1496-1497). 28Grace Book B, Part I, p. 138 (1499-1500). 29Emden, p. 221; Opus Epistolarum Erasm4, ed. P.S. Allen (Oxford; Clarendon,

1906-1958), VI, 244, no. 1656; 436, no. 1766. 30Grace Book B, Part I, p. 171 (1500-1501). 31Docs. I, 202; Emden, p. 444.



Leader 221

During the next few years the new structuring of the undergraduate arts course, prescribed by the two aforementioned statutes, was re- flected in the programs of students who supplicated for graces to take the B.A. Scholars described their programs as four years of ordinary lectures "in humanitate ac logica," or "in Terencio et in dialectical" or having at least two years "in arte humanitatis."32 These confirm the new emphasis on humane studies in the undergraduate curriculum.

The next Terence professor recorded after Caius Auberinus was John Philippe, who in 1507 was paid by the proctors ?3 13s. "pro lec- tione Terentiana" for the two previous years.33 Philippe, M.A. 1500, senior proctor and university preacher in 1507-1508, was a fellow of Queens' College, along with Fisher and Fawne in those years. His Latin credentials were well known to Congregation, as he had composed letters for the university since 1500.34 Philippe reappears in 1518-1519 when the proctors reimbursed John Vawen (another Queens- man and friend of Erasmus)35 for ?3 13s. 4d. paid through him to Phil- ippe "as was conceded by the university by grace."36

In the next year two other men were paid by Congregation for their lecturing. The first, a Master Ley who received 16s., cannot be identified.37 Of the second, Robert Ridley, much more is known. Like Patenson he was from Northumberland, and like Philippe he was a university preacher. Ridley, M.A. 1500, received "for his ordinaries" 58s. in 1508-1509 "by order of the vice-chancellor" and another 20s. the following year.38 Although not a reformer of the same fervor as his nephew Nicholas, Robert Ridley was, with the other university lecturers, a supporter of the new learning and of clerical reform.39 In 1520 Ridley was again paid for his ordinaries, as was Edmund Beriff, M.A. and fellow of Catherine Hall. Beriff had also been a university preacher.

We know the name of no other Terence professors although the continued existence of the position is clear. In 1513-1514 payments of 26s. 8d. were made by the proctors to unnamed lecturers in both "libros therencii" and "philosophiam.'"41 Similar payments were recorded between 1515 and 1520, and by 1518-1519 a separate "schola

32Grace Book F, pp. 2, 12, and 49 (1501-1507). 33Grace Book B, Part I, p. 232 (1507-1508). 34Grace Book B, Part I, pp. 158-242 (1500-1509). 3"The Correspondence of Erasmus, in The Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, 1975), II, 271, no. 283 ("Vaughan, a learned man"); V, 304, no. 777; and 398, no. 826; Opus Epistolarum, VI, 244, no. 1656; 436, no. 1766.

36Grace Book B, Part II, pp. 68-69 (1518-1519). 37Grace Book B, Part I, p. 237 (1508-1509). 38Grace Book B, Part I, pp. 237, 239, and 245 (1508-1510). 39Emden, pp. 480-481. 40Emden, p. 56; Grace Book B, Part II, p. 84 (1519-1520). 4'Grace Book B, Part II, p. 29 (1513-1514).




therenciana" with "throna" begins to appear in the accounts as it required cleaning and repair.42

Although these lectures were clearly an important element in the faculty of arts, they remained on uncertain footing until an indepen- dent source of funding could be assured. To this end the university sought the patronage of great men of the realm, as Oxford had unsuc- cessfully done in the previous century. Cambridge, doubtless through the efforts of Bishop Fisher, solicited the help of two lawyers in the humanist circles of London.

The first of these men was Sir John Hussey, eldest son of Sir Wil- liam Hussey. Sir William, chief justice of the King's Bench from 1481 until his death in 1495, had been the frequent recipient of gifts of wine from the university.43 Sir John, knighted in 1503, was a soldier, diplo- mat, and comptroller of the royal household (1521). More significantly, he was an associate of Bishop Smith and Sir Richard Sutton in the founding of Brasenose College, Oxford (1509), was related by marriage to the humanist circle of Lord Mountjoy, the patron of Erasmus, was himself the patron of The Mirror... of Christes Passion by John Few- terer of Syon Monastery (M.A. of Cambridge and university preacher 1510-1511), and was executed in 1537 for supposed complicity in the Pilgrimage of Grace.44

In 1507-1508 Congregation paid John Philippe, the Terence professor that year, 2s. for writing a letter to Bishop Richard Foxe (past chancellor of Cambridge and current master of Pembroke), "for the establishment of the theological lecture founded by Lord Hussey."45 Hussey seems to have lost interest, however, as nothing more is heard of this lectureship. Hussey soon turned his interest, and funds, to Brasenose, founded the next year.

Cambridge was more fortunate with Sir Robert Rede, who suc- ceeded William Hussey as a justice of the King's Bench in 1495 and was chief justice from 1509 until his death in 1519. Like Hussey, he was a regular recipient of gifts from Cambridge, probably for his help in the chronic litigation between the university and town.46

Rede's connections with the humanist circles of London were many and varied. In addition to his cultivation by Cambridge, he prob-

42Grace Book B, Part II, pp. 45, 52, 68-69, 83-85, 135, 145, and 194 (1515-1535). 43Grace Book A, pp. 202 and 220 (1485-1488); Grace Book B, Part I, pp. 9-64 (1488-

1493); C.H. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge (Cambridge: Bell, 1840), I, 238-239 (1489- 1490).

44J.K. McConica, English Humanists and Reformation Politics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), p. 81; Dictionary of National Biography, ed. S. Lee (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1885-1901), X, 329.

41Grace Book B, Part I, p. 232 (1507-1508), "Item seniori pro confectione scrip- tioneque literarum ad dominum Wintoniensem pro stabilitione lectionis theologice per dominum Husy fundate."

46Grace Book B, Part I, pp. 120, 136, 137, and passim (1498-1511); Grace Book B, Part II, pp. 2, 5, and passim (1511- 1519).



Leader 223

ably knew Thomas More through their common profession, was speak- er of the House of Commons in 1514-1515, and was also an executor of Henry VII, along with Richard Foxe. These connections are particular- ly apparent in Rede's will: he requested burial in the Charterhouse, London, and founded a chantry there, and he left other bequests to King's College, the Briggetines at Syon, and the nunnery of Malling, Kent, where his daughter was professed.47

Rede's largest benefaction, made no doubt at Bishop Fisher's sug- gestion, was to establish an assured annual stipend for the three professorships which had hitherto been funded through the heads of the colleges and hostels.48 Although Rede died in January, 1519, this benefaction was not founded until December 1524, after several years of efforts by the university.49 The final indenture specified that every May Day 20 marks be paid by Waltham Abbey, Holy Cross,50 to the Master of Jesus College, who in turn paid three men 26s. 8d. on the last day of each term (i.e. ?4 per annum) for:'1

three lectures contynuallye reade and kepte in the tearme tyme in the Common Schooles of the sayde universitye for Ordinaries to the Studentes in art there that ys to saye one lecture in humanitye the seconde in logicke and the third in philosophie naturall or morall....

The lecturers were to be chosen by the executors,52 and after their death by the "laudable Custom and Usage of ... the university ... on 10 June" (thus giving them their later name "Barnaby lectures" from the Feast of St. Barnabas, June 1 1).3 As a proviso the men chosen for these lectureships were required to have their students pray for Rede once a term.54

The Rede lectureships represent a striking example of a layman, sympathetic to humanism and Erasmian reform, furthering those

47DNB XVI, 816-817. 48Rede provided an endowment for the salaried lectureships founded in 1488, not

for a new set of lectures. This was not understood by J.B. Mullinger in his History of Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1873), I, 518.

49Grace Book B, Part II, p. 102 (1521-1522), "Item uni scholarium collegii divi Joannis pro descripcione unius partis indenturarum concernencium fundacionem trium lectionum ordinarium. 20d." p. 114 (1523-1524), "hoc anno concedebatur authoritas condiendi nova statuta trium lecturarum therentii, scil. logices et philosophie, vener- abilis viris domino doctori capono et Magistro blando executoribus domini Reeyd Militis, et domini doctori gardynero ut hi tres coniunctim ex impensis predicti militis deinceps omnes scholares et ipsam denique achademiam exonerarent, quantum ad ordinaria solvenda spectat, imposterum."

50After the suppression this was paid by the abbey's former estate at Babraham. "1Cambridge University Archives, Black Parchment Book, pp. 190-191. 12The executors included William Capon, university preacher 1509-1510, D.Th.

1516-1517, Master of Jesus 1516-1546, and later a strong friend of protestantism (DNB, III, 932), and Robert Brudenell, chief justice of Common Pleas, 1521-1532.

"3Black Parchment Book, p. 192. "Black Parchment Book, p. 196.




ideals through his patronage of education (along with the Charter- house and Syon). The Barnaby Lectures were to prove a permanent feature of the university.

The movement to salaried professorships also found early expres- sion in the quadrivial sciences, collectively called "mathematics."", Congregation passed two statutes c. 1500 that restructured the bachelor's program. In addition to the traditional demand that students spend three years studying "libros Aristotelis in philosophia," they were to divide that time with new lectures "in mathematicalia."56 This was outlined more clearly in the second statute, which begins by re- hearsing the old program that led to the M.A.: dialectics, the Posterior Analytics, and the philosophy of Aristotle.57 However, since this program of lectures, "an inane and worthless burden," had disappeared "either from age or carelessness," and since mathematics was "not unworthy," Congregation established a three year sequence in this field.58

The first year of the lectures was to cover arithmetic and music, the second geometry and perspective, and the third astronomy. They were to be read in term, except during Lent. The six weeks missed during Lent were to be read in the Long Vacation instead. As with the Terence lectures, the university was regularly offering classes out of term. The mathematics professor was to be chosen by a vote of the regent masters and be paid a stipend of 26s. 8d. per term. The money was to be gathered from fees collected by students taking any degree, and the university accounts after 1500-1501 show that these were regularly collected.59

The first mathematics professor was Roger Collyngwood, M.A. 1499, student of canon law at Paris and fellow of Queens' College, who held the post 1501-1503, 1504-1507, and 1514-1517. Under the name "Carbo in ligno" he wrote a long but incomplete treatise entitled Arithmetria experimentalis, which he dedicated to Bishop Foxe. In that dedication Collyngwood states that Cambridge "imposed on me, although unworthy, the task of teaching the youths the quadrivial studies."60 Collyngwood wrote in an italic hand and neo-classical style, and his work is essentially the arithmetic of Euclid and Campanus explained in detail; numbers, proportions, the four operations, square and cube roots, and quadratic equations are all explained, with tables and diagrams included.

"5The quadrivial sciences (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) were called scienciae mathematicales and were distinguished from the scienciae sermonicales, or trivium. See J.A. Weisheipl, "The Nature, Scope, and Classification of the Sciences," Studia Mediewistyczne 18 (1977), 85-101.

"6Docs. I, 360-361, no. 86. "7Docs. I, 382-383, no. 136. I8Docs. I, 382-383, no. 136, "quoniam vel vetustate vel incuria jam prorsus evasit

inanis onerosa ac inutilis...." I9Docs. I, 382-383, no. 136; Grace Book B, Part I, pp. 163, 171, and passim. 60Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS. 102, fol. iv, "mihi, licet indigno, ... onus

docendi iuvenes quadriviales scienciae imposuisset."



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Collyngwood was followed by a succession of men with strong ties to the new learning, most of whom were fellows of Queens' or St. John's, colleges strongly influenced by Bishop Fisher.61 William Peyto, Henry Bullock, and Humphrey Walden were all fellows of Queens' during Erasmus's stay from 1511-1513, and this tradition of humanistic sci- entists who were appointed as mathematics professor continued well into the sixteenth century.62

Before leaving the mathematics lecture it should be noted that from 1532-1535 it was changed to "Pomponius Mella or some other geographical author," (perhaps in response to an interest in the New World discoveries), and in 1535-1538 into a lecture on Greek or Hebrew (probably as a temporary way of implementing the royal injunctions of 1535 which demanded university-funded lectures in those fields).63 The lecture was returned to its original form in 1539 with the appointment of Roger Ascham of St. John's College.64

Greek, the last professorship established before 1520 in the Cam- bridge faculty of arts, was even more clearly an effort at humanist reform. Greek had probably been taught privately in the colleges of both Oxford and Cambridge in the late fifteenth century, but the first clearly documented examples do not occur until 1511 at Cambridge and 1512 at Oxford.65

The Cambridge Greek was taught in the autumn of 1511 by Eras- mus, then resident at Queens', and the class included Henry Bullock, the current lecturer in mathematics, later vice-chancellor, anti-Luther- an polemicist, and backer of the first printing press at Cambridge. Greek continued to be studied following Erasmus's departure in 1513 although the first university lecturer, Richard Croke, was not appointed until 1518."

Richard Croke, B.A. 1509 and fellow King's, had first studied Greek under William Grocyn in London in 1509 before moving to Paris, Louvain, Cologne, and Leipzig, where in 1515 he became the first lecturer in Greek. A friend and associate of Erasmus, he published two Greek grammars there in 1516. Croke then returned to Cambridge in the autumn of 1516 and incepted M.A. the following spring. He was appointed university professor of Greek by Bishop Fisher that autumn

61This connection has been securely established by P.L. Rose in "Erasmians and Mathematicians at Cambridge in the Early Sixteenth Century," The Sixteenth Century Journal 8 (1977), 47-59.

62Rose, p. 53. 63Grace Book r, pp. 272-302 (1532-1535); the lecture was changed to Hebrew and

given in that subject by the incumbent mathematics professor, Edward More. See pp. 310, 315, and 327 (1536-1538).

64Grace Book B, Part II, p. 226 (1539-1540); Rose, p. 56. 6'Register G, fol. 161r (December 15, 1512). 66Correspondence of Erasmus, II, 177, no. 233; IV, 34, no. 449; Emden, p. 105; Mul-

linger, pp. 517-518; A.B. Cobban, The King's Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 82-83.




(1517), and the next April Erasmus wrote him a letter of congratula- tion.67 Croke's principium as Greek professor did not take place until July 1519, however, a lecture which was soon published. In it Croke emphasized the standard humanist position of the propaedeutic rela- tionship of Greek towards the arts, philosophy, and theology. The lecture is also notable for the ironic position taken towards scholastic philosophy (specifically Scotism), as not being incompatible with the study of Greek.68

How this lecture was paid for is not certain. Thomas More, writing to the Oxford Congregation in 1518, claimed that students at Cam- bridge were "so moved by common interest in their university" that they were "actually making large individual contributions to the salary of the Greek professor."69 This may well have happened, but by the next year Cambridge had instituted the office of "Public Orator," with a stipend of ?2 per annum "ex aerario publico." The orator, who had to know "Greek as well as Latin," was responsible for composing letters and making orations to visiting dignitaries. Croke, "who first brought Greek literature to us," was named as the first holder of this honorary position, which he was allowed to hold as long as he liked.70 The first payment was recorded in the autumn of 1519,71 and this oratorship was to provide a position for the Greek professor until the regius professorship was founded in 1540.

Croke was followed by George Day of St. John's (1528-1537), later bishop of Chicester and distinguished civil servant. His salary was raised to ?4 in 1528, bringing it into line with the other professorships.72 Sir Thomas Smith of Queens', teacher of Greek and mathematics to Roger Ascham and future privy counselor and ama- teur, was the last to hold the oratorship/Greek professorship under this system. In 1540 the regius chair in Greek was founded, putting the study of Greek on a more solid footing, and the first man to hold the position was John Cheke of St. John's, pupil of George Day and teacher of Ascham and William Cecil, Lord Burghley.73

The faculty of arts was not the only beneficiary of salaried lectures. Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, was the center of a humanist circle noted for its piety and receptiveness to furthering

67Correspondence of Erasmus, V, 398-399, no. 827; DNB, V, 119-121; Opus Epistolarum, III, 546-547, no. 948.

68R. Croke, Orationes Richardi Croci duae altera (Paris: Simon Colineus, 1520). Ex- tracts can be found in Mullinger, pp. 529-537.

69St. Thomas More: Selected Letters, ed. E.F. Rogers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), p. 101, no. 60/19.

70Docs. I, 431-432, ". . . proviso semper ut uni domino Croco perpetuum hoc offi- cium sit, quamdiu placuerit hic sedem habere permanentem ... quia primus invexit literas ad nos graecas."

71Grace Book B, Part II, p. 84 (1519-1520). 72Grace Book r, p. 237 (1528-1529). 73DNB, I, 622-631.



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church reform through good letters. Under the direction of her chaplain, Bishop Fisher, she founded professorships in theology at Oxford and Cambridge around the turn of the century.74 The first man to hold the chair at Cambridge was Bishop Fisher (1502), who was followed in the next decade by Erasmus (1511-1513). Lady Margaret also established preacherships75 and was a force behind the reorganization of Godshouse as Christ's College (1505) and the founding of St. John's (1517). One of Wolsey's lectureships at Oxford in 1519 was also in theology.76

The extent and significance of these early Cambridge professorships is clear. Between 1488 and 1519 the university created salaried positions in logic, the humanities, the quadrivium, philosophy, and Greek, the entire spectrum of the faculty of arts. These were in addition to the Lady Margaret professorship in theology. The masters appointed to these positions were almost exclusively men of the new learning, friends of Erasmus, fellows of St. John's and Queens', several of whom went on to important careers in the church and state. And, in the case of Robert Rede and Lady Margaret, the patrons came from humanist circles outside the university. These professorships are one of the more striking examples of change in pre-reformation Cambridge, a dynamic period when a novel approach was used to serve new ends.

74The exact date is uncertain. See Mullinger, pp. 435-436, and Cooper, pp. 247 and 271.

7'Cooper, p. 273. 76Epistolae Academicae 1508-1596, pp. 90-91; Thomas Linacre, humanist and royal

physician, left provision in his will for the establishment of a professor of medicine at St. John's College, Cambridge, and Merton College, Oxford. The Cambridge professorship commenced by 1526, and the Oxford by 1559. See J.M. Fletcher, "Linacre's Lands and Lectureships," in Essays on the Life and Works of Thomas Linacre c. 1460-1524, ed. F. Maddison, M. Pelling, and C. Webster (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), pp. 107-197.

