Book account

Yet the function of the
_studium_ as promoting a healthy circulation between the various orders
of medieval society, must not be ignored.
Partly to help on the poor, partly to encourage men to devote
themselves to the pursuit of knowledge, endowments began to arise which
soon enhanced the splendour of universities though they lessened their
mobility and their freedom. The mendicant convents at Paris and Oxford
prepared the way for secular foundations, at first small and
insignificant, like that which, in the days of Henry III., John Balliol
established at Oxford for the maintenance of poor scholars, but soon
increasing in magnitude and distinction. The great college set up by
St. Louis' confessor at Paris for the endowment of scholars, desirous
of studying the unlucrative but vital subject of theology, was soon
imitated by the chancellor of Henry III. Side by side with Robert of
Sorbon's college of 1257, arose Walter of Merton's foundation of 1263,
and twenty years later Bishop Balsham's college of Peterhouse extended
the "rule of Merton" to Cambridge.


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