§ 1. The privileges of private persons are not detriments to the state, as envious malice is accustomed to object against many brave men. For since in justice the mean is not established according to arithmetical proportion, so that Titus has as much as Gaius, but by geometrical reckoning, so that the recompense for the labors and dangers of Titus bears the same proportion that Titus bears to Gaius, and reward is rendered according to the magnitude of the work and the dignity of the person, it is not unjust to give unequal things to unequal persons. Since, moreover, among all human things the studies of wisdom claim first place for themselves, they must be adorned with great honor and immunities. If, therefore, a laurel is decreed to the victor, if maintenance in the Prytaneum, if immunity from taxes, if other incentives to courage, how great must be the care for wisdom, by which courage and the other virtues are governed?
Privileges, moreover, belong either to places or to students and professors devoting their labor to studies in privileged places, as they call them. Both things and persons receive them. All are deservedly granted; for it is also fitting that the citizens to whom an academy is entrusted should be honored, so that they may be rightly disposed toward learned men, studies, and students, and may both wish and be able to assist them.
§ 2. The first privilege is that provision be made for the advantages and liberty of an academic city. History relates that the Athenians were endowed with many privileges. For after losing the empire of Greece and their liberty, they flourished much more peacefully under Roman rule, by the protection of letters, than they had when they lived under their own laws. Hadrian especially favored them: he honored their studies with money and an annual supply of grain, and gave them Cephallenia; so Dio Cassius and Sextus Aurelius Victor. Yet Demetrius had long before surpassed Hadrian’s munificence: although offended by their defection and taunts, he nevertheless relieved them, when oppressed by want, with a distribution of grain. Emperor Severus avenged his injuries less civilly, for he diminished their privileges.
Everything, therefore, which, in accordance with the character of the nation and the nature, business, and situation of its towns, can adorn and enlarge an academic city may be granted. Such is a prerogative of dignity among other towns; for since academic cities contain an academic senate composed of the wisest theologians, jurists, physicians,
and philosophers, there is no doubt that the civic council too will become wiser through familiarity with and the counsel of the most learned men. Next, I judge that immunity from certain taxes must be permitted, especially those which are accustomed to burden the grain supply and provisions. For this benefit is general, as one bestowed upon various nations. Accordingly, just as Aachen, the most noble seat of the German realm, received throughout the whole empire freedom of commerce and immunity from tolls because the august emperors had established their residence there, so too the kindness of a prince requires that, like a father, he support more magnificently, with no loss to the treasury, whatever city he has willed to be an abode of wisdom, virtue, and letters. The large multitude of students, however, will compensate that loss in another way. Third, if a prince is not free to bestow this indulgence upon the whole state, he can nevertheless be more liberal toward those in whose houses and at whose tables students lodge; for in this way they will obtain more honorable lodgings at less expense.
§ 3. The second privilege is that the arts be taught publicly in one or two designated places in the city. This appears altogether necessary, for private and clandestine teachers, who are all mercenary, can introduce great errors. Theodosius and Valentinian forbade teaching at Rome in any place other than the Capitol: the sole law On Liberal Studies in the City of Rome, Book 21, chapter 18. Nor do I judge that anyone can enjoy the privileges except those who are taught publicly in a public place.
Julian indeed prohibited the profession of civil law to the Alexandrians and Caesareans, because unlearned men, intent upon gain, imbued youth with depraved opinions.
§ 4. The sciences may also be taught in monasteries and by religious. This was the practice of old. Trithemius, On the Praise of Scribes, manual, chapter 16: “Nor ought you to leave the monastery for the sake of study, because you can find at home the means by which you may advance. For we have known that many most learned monks formerly flourished in our order, and we know that they studied only in monasteries. Bede, priest and monk, most skilled in every kind of learning, was entrusted to a monastery at seven years of age; there he drank in whatever he learned of the Scriptures. Among his disciples were the most learned Alcuin, later the teacher of Charlemagne, Claudius, and John Scotus—monks excelling in all doctrine, divine as well as secular, and instructed in Greek and Latin speech—of whom many distinguished works survive.
“Rabanus, abbot and archbishop of Mainz, was entrusted to the monastery of Fulda while still almost a boy; how much he advanced in every science his volumes testify. His abbot of Fulda nevertheless sent him to Francia for the sake of study, to Abbot Alcuin, whom we have already mentioned; under his instruction he persevered for many years in the monastery. Strabo, a monk of Fulda, is said to have been the disciple and scribe of Abbot Rabanus; given to a monastery as a young man, he shone forth as a distinguished teacher. So too Haymo, Notker, Hermann Contractus, and almost innumerable other monks were regarded as excellent teachers. Living humbly under the Rule of Saint Benedict, they had monasteries for their schools.
“Nor do we say that those men who were regarded as the teachers of others lacked teachers. They certainly had teachers, but monks and companions in the regular life, who instructed them no less by life than by doctrine. Perhaps we too should find teachers if we were willing to be disciples. For unless humility and love of the Scriptures mutually agree with each other, the studies of monks are neither expedient for the order nor profitable. Love of the Scriptures without humility destroys the discipline of the regular life; humility without love does not attain knowledge of those Scriptures.
“Therefore, let the man who desires to become learned in a monastery preserve these two things inviolate. Let us imitate the holy Fathers, applying ourselves to the divine Scriptures with humble love; and what divine grace conferred upon them it will not deny to us as we pray and read diligently. For the more assiduous each man is in reading, the richer the fruit he takes from it. The fruit, moreover, which we seek in the Sacred Scriptures is love of God and of our neighbor, and knowledge of our most merciful Savior.”
For this reason we see that most theological studies have been entrusted to religious houses or persons even today. Gregory the Great also once cleansed Britain of the Pelagian heresy by entrusting sacred lectures to monasteries. Nor are the treatments of letters foreign to their institution, because, apart from jurisprudence and medicine, the other sciences are customarily referred to theology, although scarcely anyone can be a theologian without a general knowledge of laws.
§ 5. I am not ignorant that the profession of monks and ascetics—the divine occupations—sometimes conflicts with the variety of sciences taught in academies, as Charlemagne rightly judged in the additions to his Capitularies, chapter 45. But since many are compelled to apply themselves to sacred sermons and to the care of preserving and governing affairs; since very many abbots administer provinces, govern subject peoples, and possess their station and dignity in the empire, it ought not to seem foreign to a servant of God, a religious man, or a hermit of a monastery, amid so great a scarcity of pious teachers, to profess grammar, poetry, eloquence, and philosophy, so that by this opportunity he may instill piety into tender minds. Indeed, in former times the sons of magnates were excellently instructed no more in piety than in every kind of learning. For until approximately the year of the Lord 1200, monasteries were almost the sole abodes of letters. From that time academies were established and monastic discipline declined. The study of civil law is also often useful to clerics; but there is another place for treating these matters.
§ 6. Very many personal privileges—that is, privileges of professors and students—have been established in various academies, both by reason of their dignity and because the greater part of the students are foreigners. No one is ignorant of the great injuries to which they are exposed while, as young men far from fatherland and kindred, they are compelled to live under foreign law. The poverty of many is worthy of compassion; the nobility of others is often exposed to the dangers of journeys and to the tricks of cheats and money-changing. Unless the kindness of the laws assists them in all these things, it is inevitable that everyone should be turned away from studies and from learning and esteeming wisdom.
No one except students can properly estimate the labors of study. I confess that men of ability find in the treatment of studies a great delight, one greater than all human pleasures; for this reason it is easy for studious and industrious young men to be chaste. Nevertheless, that most delightful recreation of the mind gradually consumes health and even the man himself, like a kind of fever. For in truth it produces melancholy, rheums, diseases of the head, chest, and vital organs, and various symptoms, to such a degree that the most eminent physicians prescribe a certain special regimen for students. For these reasons princes have conferred very many privileges upon doctors of the gown.
§ 7. The first privilege is that professors and students should in most causes, or in all, be exempt from the jurisdiction of the ordinary praetor or judge, but have their own senate and judge;
and thus, although the academy is in a city, it nevertheless enjoys its own law as though it were a certain private state. The reason is just and has been approved by all academic cities. For academies consist of many most distinguished and learned men, to whose judgment one might more readily entrust a lawful cause than to the consul or prefect of the city. Next, many causes arise which need a swift judgment pronounced, as it were, upon a summary hearing. Since students, as foreigners, readily suffer injury from inhabitants, there is need of a judge who is in no way suspect. It is readily presumed that a consul’s disposition is more favorable toward his own citizens—often his relatives and connections—than toward strangers and, as frequently happens, toward a neighboring and hated nation. Judges are therefore deservedly selected from the professors and academic senators.
Nevertheless, in most places this common axiom of law is preserved: the plaintiff follows the court of the defendant. And I judge that it is the foundation of a true and free academy to possess a magistracy and tribunal. For this reason Julius, the magnanimous and most provident bishop of Würzburg, when he founded an academy, gave it power equal to the ordinary tribunal of his chancery and admitted no appeal except to the prince alone. This was deservedly so, since princes themselves very frequently submit the gravest causes to the judgment of academies.
Yet I have observed that this privilege is sometimes abused, when youth, relying upon the leniency of the courts, fight among themselves with swords or grow insolent in injuries against the citizens. Grave citizens not rarely object to this, to the great disgrace of the academies and harm of studies. Martin Luther, shortly before his death, writes that this happened at Wittenberg, addressing his own colleagues. For he complains that such outrages were committed and that there was such contumacy that the four elements could not bear it; the leading men of Saxony afterward complained in the same way about the insolence of the academicians. These things must be avoided. Nevertheless, an academy must not immediately be assailed and its privileges diminished whenever the ardor of youth is swept away into some levity, since the vices of youth are corrected most calmly and easily through their own moderators.
And indeed princes, induced by the centaur-like counsels of certain courtiers, gravely err when they diminish the authority of those through whom alone they can restore holy morals—as though there were not graver sins in the cities themselves, indeed in the courts of princes, than among the alumni of academies, and yet princes would not wish the transgressions of their household attendants to shake the scepters from their own hands. With great judgment so great a liberty has been granted to studies, as at Bologna, Paris, and Mainz.
The first privilege of the Academy of Mainz, which Archbishop Diether granted, reads thus: “We therefore bestow, grant, and concede by force of the present letters: first, to the doctors, masters, scholars or students of our said university of Mainz, the judges whom they can possess by law—the rector and conservator of the university and the ordinary of the place.” Most equitable statutes command the plaintiff to follow the forum of the defendant, for the common law decreed this long ago.
Concerning judicial procedure our founder established as follows: “In order that provision may be made for those incorporated into our university concerning observance of judicial order and the decision of causes, we will and ordain that the rector shall have power to hear and determine every cause and question arising among the aforesaid incorporated persons. If he is rejected as suspect by either party, we will that arbitrators be elected and that the other provisions which the laws make concerning this be observed.”
Consuls, satraps, praetors, and judges ought neither to be jealous nor to judge that anything has been taken away from their dignity if a certain part of the state has other, and indeed its own, governors, since they themselves entrust their sons to teachers and pedagogues. For when anyone sends his children to Padua or Bologna, to the marketplace of the sciences, who judges it equitable that the child should be subject to civic rather than academic magistrates?
§ 8. The second privilege is that professors of the arts, doctors of laws, and their wives should have immunity from all civic and public duties, even from the reception of guests; so Constantine judged. In this matter the founder of our academy was indeed munificent. The words of the grant read thus:
“Likewise, let the doctors, masters, and students of our university, as also the notaries and beadles, be immune, exempt, and free, in their persons and in things pertaining to their food, clothing, and use, from public payments and charges imposed and to be imposed throughout the city and diocese of Mainz, by land or by water, and pertaining for the time being to the archbishops of Mainz. Let them neither be held nor compelled to the payment of a tax, excise, impost, toll, or of anything of any other kind, by whatever name they may be designated, every manner of deceit and fraud being entirely excluded.
“And we will that this concession and favor be understood of masters and scholars who dwell collectively in houses or bursae, and of students who, after obtaining the rector’s permission, dwell in houses or rooms outside the bursae and maintain themselves and their households at their own cost and expense.
“Likewise, since the greatest quiet is fitting for professors of letters and for those who are to be instructed in learning and morals, and since those who pursue better things will be strangers to tumult, we will and ordain that the houses and dwellings of the rector, doctors, masters, and students—and especially the schools in which the college, doctors, masters, and students live together, which in their common manner they call bursae, or in which honorable students dwell after the rector’s permission has been sought and obtained, maintaining themselves and their household at their own cost and by domestic provision—shall enjoy this perpetual immunity: that no official or member of his household, of whatever condition or status he may be or by however extensive a commission he may be appointed, shall presume tumultuously to invade those houses or dwellings, or break into or violate them with ruinous force, every fraudulent fiction or false pretext being entirely removed.
“Moreover, let no official or any other ecclesiastical or secular person presume in the city of Mainz to attack or offend any one or more of the doctors, masters, students, or their household, or to inflict violence or injury upon them. But if anyone, which God forbid, is found to be a contemner of this our concession, let him know that he will incur our indignation and a penalty to be inflicted according to the measure of such offense, deceit, or fault.
“And seventh: likewise we will that none of our functionaries and officials, or any other laymen or citizens, shall injure, offend, disturb, or otherwise place in danger in any manner any doctor, master, or student, by word or deed, directly or indirectly, every fraud and deceit being removed, under the aforesaid penalty.”
But since all who attend the schools and do not live within the bursae, as they say, do this with the permission of the rector, they all also enjoy that privilege. These provisions are clear concerning personal burdens and those goods which are given as salaries; but I do not think that the law is understood of patrimonial goods, nor does custom permit this. And lest those privileges of the renowned academy be infringed by the ignorance or malice of other administrators, the most wise founder willed that all officials of the city of Mainz be bound by oath to preserve the academy’s immunity. The words read thus:
“Likewise, every official of this our city holding office for the time being shall swear into our hands to preserve unharmed the aforesaid doctors, masters,
and students in their persons, affairs, and goods, and not to contravene the said privileges, but to uphold them and their affairs, goods, and privileges aforesaid and hereafter stated, to the extent of his ability and knowledge.”