Colleges, and Colleges for the advancement of science, were not altogether a medieval idea. To say nothing else, it is obvious to refer to the Museum of the Ptolemies at Alexandria, of which I spoke in an earlier Chapter. The Saracens too founded Colleges for learned education at Cordova, Granada, and Malaga; and these obtained a great reputation. Yet it is an idea, which has been brought out and familiarized in history, and recognized in political institutions, and completed in its parts, during the era of Universities, with a fulness which almost allows us to claim it as belonging to the new civilization. By a College, I suppose, is meant, not merely a body of men living together in one dwelling, but belonging to one establishment. In its very notion, the word suggests to us position, authority, and stability; and again, these attributes presuppose a foundation; and that foundation consists either in public recognition, or in the possession of revenues, or in some similar advantage. If two or three individuals live together, the community is not at once called a College; but a charter, or an endowment, some legal status, or some ecclesiastical privilege, is necessary to erect it into the Collegiate form. However, it does, I suppose, imply a community or convitto too; and, if so, it must be of a certain definite size: for, as soon as it exceeds in point of numbers, non-residence may be expected to follow. It is then a household, and offers an abode to its members, and requires or involves the same virtuous and paternal discipline which is proper to a family and home. Moreover, as no family can subsist without a maintenance, and as children are dependent on their homes, so it is not unnatural that an endowment, which is, as I have said, suggested by the very idea of a College, should ordinarily be necessary for its actual carrying out. Still more necessary are buildings, and buildings of a prominent character; for, whereas every family must have its dwelling, a family which has a recognized and official existence, must live in a sort of public building, which satisfies the eye, and is the enduring habitation of an enduring body.
This view of a College, which I have not been attempting to prove but to delineate, suggests to us the objects which a College is adapted to fulfil in a University. It is all, and does all, which is implied in the name of home. Youths, who have left the paternal roof, and travelled some hundred miles for the acquisition of knowledge, find an “altera Troja” and “simulata Pergama” at the end of their journey and in their place of temporary sojourn. Home is for the young, who know nothing of the world, and who would be forlorn and sad, if thrown upon it. It is the refuge of helpless boyhood, which would be famished and pine away, if it were not maintained by others. It is the providential shelter of the weak and inexperienced, who have still to learn how to cope with the temptations which lie outside of it. It is the place of training for those who are not only ignorant, but have not yet learned how to learn, and who have to be taught, by careful individual trial, how to set about profiting by the lessons of a teacher. And it is the school of elementary studies, not of advanced; for such studies alone can boys at best apprehend and master. Moreover, it is the shrine of our best affections, the bosom of our fondest recollections, a spell upon our after life, a stay for world-weary mind and soul, wherever we are cast, till the end comes. Such are the attributes or offices of home, and like to these, in one or other sense and measure, are the attributes and offices of a College in a University.
We may consider, historically speaking, that Colleges were but continuations, mutatis mutandis, of the schools which preceded the rise of Universities. These schools indeed were monastic or at least clerical, and observed a religious or an ecclesiastical rule; so far they were not simple Colleges, still they were devoted to study, and, at least sometimes, admitted laymen. They had two courses of instruction going on at once, attended by the inner classes and the outer; of which the latter were filled by what would now be called externs. Thus even in that early day the school of Rheims educated a certain number of noble youths; and the same arrangement is reported of Bec also.
And in matter of fact these monastic schools remained within the limits of the University, when it was set up, as they had been before, only of course more exclusively religious; for, as soon as the reception of laymen was found to be a part of the academical idea, the monasteries seemed to be relieved of the necessity of receiving lay students within their walls. At first, those Orders only would have a place in the University which were already there; but in process of time nearly every religious fraternity found it its interest to provide a College for its own subjects, and to have representatives in the Academical body. Thus in Paris, as soon as the Dominicans and Franciscans had thrown themselves into the new system, and had determined that their vocation did not hinder them from taking degrees, the Cistercians, under the headship of an Englishman, founded a College near St Victor’s; and the Premonstrants followed their example. The Carmelites, being at first at a distance from St. Geneviève, were planted by a king of France close under her hill. The Benedictines were stationed in the famous Abbey of St. German, near the University Pratum; the monks of Cluni and of Marmoutier had their respective houses also, and the former provided lecturers within their walls for the students. And in Oxford, in like manner, the Benedictines founded Durham Hall for their monks of the North of England, and Gloucester Hall for their monks of the South, on the respective sites of the present Trinity and Worcester Colleges. The Carmelites (to speak without book,) were at Beaumont, the site of Henry the First’s palace; and St. John’s and Wadham Colleges are also on the sites of monastic establishments. Besides these, there were in Oxford houses of Dominicans, Franciscans, Cistercians, and Augustinians.