![]() ![]() Initially these universities looked very different from the collegiate institutions into which they evolved: colleges, with the exception of a few early outliers (Merton, Balliol, and University College in Oxford Peterhouse in Cambridge), were founded rather later in the 14th and 15th centuries as endowed fellowships of scholars with a remit to work as a community dedicated to the service of God through higher learning. The origins of the University of Cambridge lie, famously, in an exodus on students from Oxford in 1209 following a dispute between town and gown. The head of the university was named as a chancellor in 1201, and the masters were recognized as a universitas in 1231 by the pope a royal charter was granted in 1248. ![]() Records of teaching in Oxford stretch back to 1096, and over the course of the 12th century, the town became, through a process of cumulative reputation, a center of learning. The stimulus to higher learning came from a variety of sources, particularly the rediscovery of Arabic learning and a growing interest in classical authors: in many ways, the early days of universities should be seen within the context of the “twelfth-century Renaissance.” The term “university” is drawn from Roman law, to refer to the institutional corporation that, in the case of Oxford, arose out of preexisting schools of higher learning: a university was a self-regulating community of scholars, recognized by civil or ecclesiastical authority. These early institutions represent the growth of learning out of the context of monastic and cathedral settings, and provided dedicated environments for the pursuit of studies in the arts, theology, law, and medicine. These universities emerged in a wider context of the growth of higher learning across Europe, and their origins lie concomitant with those of the universities of Paris, Bologna, and Salamanca for example. Medieval English universities include, of course, only Oxford and Cambridge.
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