§ 1. I have undertaken to treat separately a privilege of great advantage and great dignity, one which preserves most academies from destruction: namely, the honors, power, and titles which a university, as a certain state, is accustomed to confer upon those who have deserved well. For this shows much more clearly that an academy is a state than does the use of a scepter. The state alone distributes public dignities among its citizens. Therefore, just as every state is governed by expectation of rewards and punishments, so too are academies. It is rightly said:
Οὔτε γὰρ ὁ μισθὸς οὐδέν ἐστ’ οὔθ’ ἡ τέχνη.
There is neither reward for the art, nor does the art itself flourish.
All honorable things languish unless value from honor also accrues to them. For who will consecrate his sons to study if no rewards are established for so prolonged and uncertain a labor? As it is, many din this into little children:
Why do you attempt a useless study?
The other honors conferred by the multitude are indeed held in less esteem. But true honor is the judgment of wise men concerning the dignity of another. This exact judgment of learning began with the academies themselves. For although great honor was formerly decreed to learned men, nevertheless neither so exact a test by the Lydian stone nor a distinction of orders was instituted; that privilege is reserved for the worthy members of academies.
In Lucian, Solon desires that those who have conducted themselves rightly in the schools should be seen honored by all and magnificently proclaimed by the voice of a herald in the assembly of all Greece, so that all youth and the spectators might be inflamed with love of virtue and of the sciences. But as vices gained strength and wars caused disorder, no regular honor was accorded to learning. At Athens Basil was courted by the attentions of magistrates and magnates even to the point of envy. Some trace of these honors of ours appears in his case; for at Caesarea, as Gregory, that holy Achates of his, relates, the doctors of the school resolved to confer upon him the insignia of teaching and honor. Augustus also denied to everyone the authority to give legal opinions, except those to whom it had been granted by the examination of the schools.
§ 2. The Lateran Council procured the greatest authority for academic degrees or dignities, for it most diligently ordered that the studies of the good arts be defended, preserved, and promoted. The statutes and decrees of the Council of Vienne celebrated under Clement V are also excellent in this matter. Those who obtained degrees especially enjoyed all privileges.
Academic honors are public testimonies of learning conferred with dignity and reverence, and the power of acting and enjoying the goods which are connected with the dignity conferred.
That honor is great which is bestowed not upon fortune, bodily strength, or athletic exercise, but upon the goods of the mind.
Power is granted not only for giving opinions and teaching, but also for other summits of honors and dignities. For those approved by the examination of universities were sent to princes, civil as well as ecclesiastical, so that they might undertake a share in the care of the state; they also possessed by reason of learning a prerogative for benefices and prelatures. Accordingly, with this hope Justinian in the preface to the Institutes exhorts everyone to studies as necessary to the state: “Receive these laws of ours with the greatest effort and eager study, and show yourselves so learned that the most beautiful hope may encourage us that, when the entire legal work has been completed, our state too can be governed in the parts of it to be entrusted to you.”
For in a state philosophy and learning strengthen all things more than military affairs do. Valerius, Book 3, chapter 3: “There is also that vehement and constant warfare of the mind, philosophy, potent in letters, the priestess of the venerable mysteries of doctrine; when it has been received into human breasts and dishonorable and useless passion has been expelled, it strengthens them wholly within the solid fortification of virtue, rendering them more powerful than fear and grief.”
§ 3. There is variety in these dignities, first among different faculties and then within the same ones. Among different faculties the order is that theologians are placed first, jurists second, physicians third, and philosophers fourth. So Panormitanus, chapter Cleric, On Judgments; Silvester, On Doctors and Masters, number 2. Nor can the most honorable nation of physicians complain about the jurists because, while the latter protect property and riches but physicians protect life, which is greater than the accessories of life, they are placed after them. For a jurist teaches men to live well, justly, peacefully, and in a manner conducive to the common good, which is better than merely to live. I add that jurists also defend life by laws against plots and violence.
As for what some have judged—that those approved by a superior and more dignified authority ought to take precedence—I think that this is now done nowhere, so far as I know. Indeed, when doctors distinguished by diplomas from the pontiff or Caesar come to academies, for reasons which I shall state they are held suspect
περὶ ἀγνοίας,
of ignorance.
§ 4. Another order exists within one and the same faculty, in which there are those now called bachelors, licentiates, and doctors, and in theology biblical and formed bachelors. Definite times, books, and degrees of knowledge are prescribed for each, and the purpose is that they should gradually reach the summit through intermediate honors. For in every state there are degrees of honors: among the Romans, the aedileship, quaestorship, praetorship, consulship, and, as the ornament of men of consular rank, the censorship and dictatorship.
Formerly there was a different system of names, which Justinian recounts concerning students of law. For those who devoted themselves to laws in the first year, as is stated in Justinian’s letter On the Method of Teaching Law, were called dupondii by a name as frivolous as it was ridiculous—as though “two-obol men,” as Cujas thinks. A dupondius was certainly a kind of very small coin. Seneca in a Controversy: “Shall ten young men thus perish on account of your two asses?” And Seneca to Lucilius, Epistle 18: “Then, believe me, Lucilius, you will exult when filled for two asses, and you will understand that fortune is not necessary for satiety; for even when angry she must still give what is sufficient for necessity. Yet there is no reason why you should think that you are doing anything great: for you will do what many thousands of slaves and many thousands of poor men do. Esteem yourself on this account: that you will do it without being compelled.”
They were therefore two asses, or still smaller coins, which nevertheless sufficed for the most meager hunger of a little slave. I indeed think they were two asses, since Seneca adds a little later that Epicurus wrote to Polyaenus and boasted that he was fed on less than a whole as, while Metrodorus, who had not yet advanced so far, was fed on a whole one. That it was a small amount is established from the words of Epicurus in Stobaeus:
Βρυάζω τῷ κατὰ τὸ σωμάτιον ἡδεῖ, ὕδατι καὶ ἄρτῳ χρώμενος, καὶ προσπτύω ταῖς ἐκ πολυτελείας ἡδοναῖς, οὐ δι’ αὐτάς, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὰ ἐξακολουθοῦντα αὐταῖς δυσχερῆ,
which the most learned Lipsius translates thus: “I am full and overflow with the pleasure of my little body, and that while using water and bread. But I spit upon costly pleasures, not because of the pleasures themselves, but because of the inconveniences which accompany them.”
Those dupondii, therefore, were so called in jest, almost in the same manner in which, at the beginning of logic in certain academies, they call dialecticians who have not undergone deposition Beani. But the prudent emperor softened the harsh beginnings by the honor of his own name and called the novices “New Justinians”; I see, however, that this appellation has now fallen out of use in most places.
The author himself states that auditors of the third year were called Papinianists. Auditors of the fourth year were called λῆται, or λυτοί, or, as it seems to me, λύται. For λῆται does not pertain to the matter, unless someone derives it from λάω, as though they were “seers.” Λυτοί signifies men “released” rather than “solvers” of questions. Turnebus judges that it means men fit for solving questions, by which reasoning λύται or λυτῆρες would be the best forms.
In the fifth year, in which they completed the study of law, they were called πρόλυτοι, or rather προλύται. Hesychius has προλυθείς, which he interprets by τῶν μελελυμένων, “of those who have been released”; by this he indicates that he read πρόλυτοι. But if they were “released,” those who were occupied in the fourth year had therefore not yet disentangled themselves from their difficulties. Accordingly, I prefer these men to be called λύτας, superior and more learned definers, and to have obtained this name from the honor of declaring law.
§ 5. Although the Chinese have no academies, they nevertheless confer great honors upon learned men. Thus the celebrated Nicolas Trigault, after traversing the world for the salvation of nations, explains concerning them in Book 1, chapter 5, of his Chinese Expedition:
“There is, moreover, no public school or academy, as some of our writers have asserted, whose masters have undertaken to expound these books to their pupils; rather, each chooses a teacher at his own discretion, by whom he is instructed in his own home and at his own expense. There is an immense multitude of these domestic schoolmasters, especially because, as I have said, it is customary for each man to open a school in his own house only for his sons, even if only one or two are counted, I believe so that they may not be turned away from application to study by association with others.
“In this learning three literary degrees are conferred upon those of their number who present themselves for examination and are judged fit. The examination, moreover, consists almost solely in writing. The first literary degree is conferred in individual cities, in the place which is called the school. Some distinguished man of letters appointed by the king himself for this purpose confers it. He is called Tihio by office, while the degree itself is called Sieveai and represents our baccalaureate.
“The Tihio, therefore, travels through all the cities of his province to confer that degree, before which a threefold examination is held. When that chancellor, to speak in our manner, arrives, all those from the city and its territory who aspire to that degree suddenly assemble and submit themselves to examination. The first is instituted by those schoolmasters who preside over the bachelors after they have obtained the degree while they seek to attain a further one. Anyone is admitted to this examination, and it often happens that four or five thousand are counted from one city. These schoolmasters are maintained by a royal stipend for this purpose.
“The candidates are then sent by the schoolmasters to the four prefects of the city—all of whom are learned, for no one else has a part in the state. After examining them again, the prefects present no more than two hundred from the whole number to the chancellor, those whom they have judged most worthy by reason of the better composition. The chancellor conducts the third examination, altogether more severe than the others; for from the two hundred he names as bachelors no more than twenty or thirty, according to the size of the region, whom he has found most worthy in the same examination, and joins them to the bachelors of previous years. All these represent by dignity a not inconsiderable part of the city, for all honor them in hope of the future dignity toward which they advance.
“They put on a long robe, cap, and boots as the peculiar insignia of their dignity, and it is forbidden for anyone other than a bachelor to appear in that apparel. In assemblies of magistrates they sit in a more honorable place, and weightier ceremonies of civility are shown to them which the common people are not permitted to employ. They also enjoy many immunities and are subject to almost no one except the chancellor and those four schoolmasters of theirs; nor do the other magistrates readily judge their causes or offenses. The chancellor’s office extends not only to the new bachelors but brings to the anvil even the older men distinguished by that degree in former years, and by a severe balance tests how far they have either advanced or declined.
“Accordingly, he establishes five orders according to the quality of the writing. To those who are judged to be in the first, as a reward he gives the power to discharge certain public offices—but not the highest—without a superior degree. He also grants a reward, though a lower one, to those enrolled in the second class. He judges those in the third worthy neither of reward nor of punishment. Those in the fourth are publicly beaten, paying the penalty for their indolence. Finally, those in the last are stripped of the insignia of the baccalaureate and cast back into the order of the common people. They do this lest, after the men have been enrolled among the bachelors, they hide in idleness and consign what they had learned to oblivion.
“The second literary degree of the Chinese is called Kiugin and is compared with the order of our licentiates. It is conferred only every third year in the metropolis of the province, around the eighth moon, and with still greater majesty. It is not conferred upon all who are judged worthy of it, but upon those who, among them, are most worthy within a fixed number—more or fewer according to the dignity and populousness of the provinces. For in each of the two royal cities, namely Peking and Nanking, one hundred and fifty licentiates are proclaimed from the entire number of bachelors; in the provinces of Cequiana, Quian-Sinensi, and Fuquiana, ninety-five; and in the rest, somewhat fewer according to the number of learned men and the dignity of the province.
“Only bachelors are admitted to this examination, and not even all of them; rather, from each city or school of the province, as I have already said, a minimum of thirty and a maximum of forty bachelors, selected by that chancellor from the whole number after their writing has been tested, are chosen.
“And yet by this method in the more populous provinces the number of those who aspire to the order of licentiates often grows to four thousand. Therefore, in that year which returns every third year for the initiation of licentiates—such, for example, was the year of the Lord 1609, and the next will return in 1612—a few days before the eighth moon, which often falls in the month of September, the magistrates of Peking present to the king in a submitted document one hundred philosophers selected from the whole kingdom, so that from them he may appoint thirty, namely two for each province, to preside over this examination of licentiates. One of the two must belong to the royal college which they call Hanlinguem, whose members are said to be the most celebrated in the whole kingdom.
“The king does not name them at all until the very point of time at which they will be able to arrive in the designated province by the most rapid journey. Very many guards are also employed, lest for any reason they speak with anyone from that province before the licentiates have been proclaimed. The more celebrated philosophers are also summoned from the same province by the magistrates; by them the two royal examiners are faithfully assisted in this examination and first review of the writings.
“In every metropolis one sees an immense palace constructed solely for this examination and enclosed by very high walls. Within it are very many separate dwellings removed from every disturbance, in which the examiners whom I have mentioned reside while they examine the writings. Besides these, in the middle of the palace there are more than four thousand cells, which can hold nothing beyond a small table, a stool, and one man. From these cells no one can speak with a neighbor or even see anyone.
“When the urban and royal examiners whom I have mentioned have arrived in the metropolis, each is first enclosed in his own dwelling in that palace before they can speak with anyone; indeed, they are excluded even from mutual conversation with one another during the entire time occupied in examining the writings. Furthermore, at that time long watches by night of many soldiers and magistrates investigate and prevent every exchange of letters and conversations between those who reside within the boundaries of the palace and those who remain outside them.
“The same three days are appointed everywhere throughout the whole kingdom for this examination: namely, the ninth, twelfth, and fifteenth days of the eighth moon. From the first light of dawn until the beginning of night time is granted for writing, the doors being carefully closed. A light refreshment, prepared the day before at public expense, is furnished to the writers. When the bachelors are admitted within the palace boundaries, they are examined most severely to determine whether they are carrying some book or writing with them. They are permitted to bring only some brushes which they use for writing, the writing tablet mentioned above, ink, and paper. Their garments, brushes, and writing tablets are examined lest they contain anything by fraud. If any fraud is discovered, they are not only excluded but also punished most severely.
“After the bachelors have been admitted into the palace, the doors closed and secured with public seals, the two royal presidents of the examination publish three sayings from that Tetrabiblion, chosen at their discretion, which each candidate sets before himself as the themes of as many compositions. Likewise, four sayings from those five doctrines are proposed as themes for as many other compositions. Each chooses those which are drawn from the doctrine which he professes. These seven compositions must be weighty not only with ornaments of words but also with weight of thought, the precepts of Chinese eloquence being accurately observed. No composition may exceed five hundred characters in number, each of which is equivalent to one of our words.
“On the second day—which follows two days granted for the repose of those being examined—when they have been enclosed in the same manner, three events are proposed which were drawn from the annals of the ancients and happened formerly, or certain other events which could occur hereafter. Each declares his judgment in three compositions, or advises the king by a submitted document what he thinks ought to be done in that case for the good of the kingdom. On the third day, similarly, three disputes are proposed to them from those which can require decision in discharging the offices of the state. Each again explains in three compositions the judgment which he would render in deciding that dispute.
“After each has received in this manner the subjects of the compositions on the appointed day and committed them to memory, the bachelors enter the cell designated for each of them by the persons responsible, in order to write; and in great silence each one writes everywhere. Each copies his compositions into a booklet prepared for this purpose, adding at the end of the compositions his own name and those of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, and seals the booklet so that it can be opened only by the deputies.
“When each has done this with each booklet, they offer them to the deputies. Before the booklets come into the hands of the examiners, they are copied by the hands of scribes who are already present and prepared. To prevent fraud, the copies are written in red, while the autograph texts themselves, without the names of their authors, are delivered to the examiners for review. The autographs, marked with numbers corresponding to the copies, are preserved in the meantime. This is done so that those who examine the writings may recognize neither the authors’ names nor their manner of forming the characters.
“Those first examiners selected from the urban magistrates examine all the compositions and reject every poorest one in such a manner that they offer the royal examiners twice the number to which the number of licentiates may rise. Thus, if one hundred and fifty must be proclaimed, three hundred compositions are set apart and transmitted to the dwelling of the royal examiners to be examined in the final scrutiny. From these they separate all the best ones, as many as suffice for the number of licentiates. From this number they next choose the first, second, and third compositions and arrange them carefully in order.
“When this has been accomplished, all the examiners together compare the copies with the autographs recognized by the numbers placed upon them, and read the author’s name in the autograph. They display these names, written in letters a cubit high, upon an immense tablet, at about the end of the eighth moon, amid a great concourse of magistrates and the applause of those who are connected by blood or affinity with the men proclaimed licentiates.
“This degree is far superior to and more celebrated than the former, enjoys other, more noble immunities, and possesses a distinctive ornament of dignity. Indeed, if its recipients lay aside the desire to aspire to the highest degree,
they are capable of offices in the state which are not of the lowest rank. When this proceeding has been brought to completion in this manner, the royal presidents of the examination publish a book by which the outcome of the whole examination, the names of the licentiates, and the more distinguished compositions on each proposed subject are disseminated throughout the entire kingdom in this manner. Above all, the compositions of the man who obtained first place among the licentiates are printed with those types. In Chinese he is called Quiayuen.
“This book is printed in an especially elegant character and distributed throughout the whole kingdom; several copies of it are offered to the king and to the other courtiers. Those who are bachelors of another province are by no means admitted to this examination. Only in each royal city are a few men from other provinces admitted by a special privilege, because they have been enrolled in the royal school of which they are members. After obtaining the baccalaureate, they are admitted to that college upon paying a definite number of gold pieces to the royal treasury.
“The third literary order among the Chinese is called Cinsu and plainly represents our doctorate. It too is conferred every third year, but only in the royal city of Peking, and the year for initiating doctors is always the one which immediately follows the proceeding for licentiates. Only three hundred men from the entire kingdom obtain it, although licentiates from the individual provinces are admitted by law whenever they wish to undergo the hazard of the examination.
“This proceeding is instituted in the second moon on the same days which we mentioned above, and also in the same form, with altogether no difference except that, in accordance with the degree and its dignity, diligence in the examination is also increased, lest any fraud or favor perhaps creep in. The examiners themselves are selected from the gravest magistrates of the kingdom, whom they call Colaos, concerning whom below; one is appointed president of the examination.
“When the examination has ended and the doctors have been proclaimed in that same palace in which it is also customary for the licentiates to be proclaimed, all together in the royal palace, before the chief magistrates of the entire court—and formerly even the king himself was present—they compose a writing upon a proposed theme. By the judgment of this writing the order of the magistracies which they are to hold is proclaimed, divided into three classes. Great is the solemnity of this examination, which consists entirely in a short composition. The man who obtained first place in the examination of doctors has his third place in this second examination placed beyond hazard. The man who obtains first or second place in this examination is distinguished throughout his whole life by a remarkable dignity, besides the fact that he discharges all the greatest offices in the state. That dignity might most suitably be compared with the title of duke or marquis among us, if it passed to descendants by hereditary right.
“These doctors immediately enjoy their own robe, cap, boots, and also the other insignia of magistrates, and are advanced to the richer and more noble public magistracies. The order is always such that doctors are nowhere surpassed by licentiates. They are also numbered among the foremost men of the kingdom and suddenly become so superior to the other licentiates—their own colleagues the day before—to whom fortune did not fall equally, that it can scarcely be believed; for everywhere places of precedence are yielded to them, and they are addressed by more splendid titles.
“Those licentiates, however, who have been rejected from the number of doctors, if they have laid aside hope of obtaining the doctorate in the future, are admitted to the administration of the state. Although below doctors, they nevertheless hold magistracies which are not the lowest, either in the royal city or abroad. If they decide to try fortune again, they return home and exercise themselves assiduously in writing and reading throughout the following three years, until, when the cycle of years returns, they again descend into the arena of examination. They are permitted to attempt this as often as they wish. It happens not rarely that they undergo the hazard ten times, while fortune always resists; fed upon that hope, they spend their entire life without a public office, because they wish to be either the highest or nothing.
“The outcome of the men proclaimed to this rank also—one not slight or inferior—is printed by the examiners in its own separate volume, with the names and every more distinguished composition added as above. Besides this book, another is also published annually, in which are described the names, fatherlands, parents, offices, and places of office of all the doctors. Thus, anyone who examines this annual volume will know what dignity each man held, and where, from the first year of his doctorate until his death, and by what degrees of honors he either ascended or descended—which among the Chinese is an everyday occurrence according to each man’s merits.
“And in this obtaining of degrees, it is worthy of admiration what bond colleagues of the same year contract among themselves. For licentiates no less than doctors, whom fortune conspired to favor in the same year, regard one another as brothers throughout their whole life and mutually assist both one another and the relatives of their colleagues in all matters, always with a unanimous concord of affections. They also bind a still closer bond with the examiners themselves, such as customarily exists between parents and sons or disciples and masters, with due reverence always preserved, although it often happens that the disciples themselves ascend higher than their master through the individual degrees of honors.
“It is also customary to grant these degrees of honor in the same years, places, and titles to those who profess military service. Only the time is customarily deferred to the following moon. But because the military art lies prostrate among the Chinese, these degrees are conferred with far inferior ceremony. And so few aspire to them that the affair appears altogether wretched.
“This military examination is also threefold. In the first, the candidates discharge nine arrows while urged on in an equestrian course. In the second, standing with their feet fixed, they aim as many arrows at the same target. Those who have struck the target with at least four arrows from horseback and two from the ground are admitted to the third examination, in which, when a question concerning military affairs has been proposed, they are ordered to respond in writing. The judges then compare this threefold examination and proclaim about fifty licentiates from the whole number in each province.
“In the year in which doctors are named at Peking, military candidates selected from the entire number of licentiates of the whole kingdom, after the same threefold examination, are distinguished with the military doctorate, altogether one hundred in number. Doctors from this college are more readily appointed than licentiates to some military prefecture, though not without gifts. When both groups are first proclaimed, whether they belong to the philosophical or military senate, they inscribe above the threshold of their houses, for the commendation of their family, a title in letters a cubit high, by which the dignity each has attained is signified.
“Finally, this must not be passed over: the judges and presidents of all examinations, whether an inquiry is instituted concerning military affairs, the mathematical disciplines, the art of medicine, or—much more—ethical matters,
are selected from the philosophical senate; nor is any general, mathematician, or physician joined to them. This will seem not a little astonishing and perhaps foolish to our Europeans. For so great among the Chinese is the reputation of those who excel in ethical discipline that they appear altogether able to render a suitable judgment concerning every subject, although they wander rather far beyond the bounds of their own profession.”
§ 6. I have related these things in the author’s very many words, both that I myself may recall the memory of an excellent man, one who so often placed his life in his own hands in order to gain the souls of an unknown nation, and because our academies, in which discipline has fallen and the ardor for learning has been extinguished, can be restored to soundness in this manner. Let a prince dare something similar: he will behold the most noble academy in all Europe rise in his city.
What intervals of time are required for these degrees cannot be determined with certainty. Our Society has established three years for philosophy and four years for theology. Thus Rule 17 of the Provincial Superior provides: “They shall complete the philosophical course in three years, but not in a shorter time, where our members are present. But if the hearers are external students alone, let it be left to the Provincial’s judgment. Every year, however, if it can be done, one course is to be completed and another begun.”
And Rule 9, §1: “In accordance with the Constitutions, he shall take care that the course of theology is completed in four years, and that by two ordinary professors, or, if it could not possibly be done otherwise, by three, according to the different practice of the provinces. Where there are three, however, the third lecture will be moral theology, in which moral subjects that are customarily either wholly passed over or treated very briefly by the ordinary professors are to be explained expressly and solidly. Our members should hear this lecture for at least two years, and Sacred Scripture for the other two years.”
§ 7. The laws of the Kingdom of France in this kind of matter are most severe, as the most prudent and learned writer on politics, Pierre Grégoire of Toulouse, relates in Book 18, chapter 9. He reports them thus from the concordats between the kingdom and the Supreme Pontiff: “The time that anyone has spent learning in schools contributes to a presumption proving his knowledge. Justinian taught that the study of civil law could be completed in five years, while the canons taught that canon law could be completed in seven. But by the prescription of the concordats between the French and the Supreme Pontiff, in order to obtain benefices in the Kingdom of France by force of the privileges of graduates and nominees, it was established that ordinary collators or ecclesiastical patrons are bound to confer dignities, personates, administrations, offices, and ecclesiastical benefices falling vacant in the months assigned to graduates and nominees upon those simple graduates or nominees, or at least to present them for those positions, who have studied for a competent period in a renowned university.
“A competent period is declared to be ten years for masters, licentiates, or bachelors in theology; seven years for doctors or licentiates in canon law, civil law, or medicine; five years for masters or licentiates in arts, with a rigorous examination, reckoned inclusively from logic, or in a higher faculty; six years for simple bachelors in theology; but five years for bachelors in canon or civil law. For bachelors in canon and civil law who are noble through both parents, three years are decreed sufficient. ‘Simple graduates’ there means those who do not possess nominations, and who are not endowed in obtaining benefices with favor as great as those who do possess them. Before the attainment of degrees, that period of study is required to have been completed for the purpose of obtaining the privilege of accepting benefices, vacant in certain months as was defined and distinguished, which are owed through the concordats to simple graduates or nominees.”
The period for completing the studies in the foregoing cases belongs to positive law for the purpose of obtaining the privilege; but in other cases it can be left to the discretion of the masters, who by their own judgment may approve those to be promoted either before or after that time. The arts are long, life is short, and one who is to be able to learn needs time so that afterward he may be able to teach.
§ 8. Yet he admits that this belongs to positive law, while in other cases it is discretionary; for because of the diversity of abilities, some attain learning more quickly and others more slowly. Therefore, that calculation of time must be instituted which is sufficient for middling abilities, is not burdensome to the greatest abilities, and is scarcely attained by slow abilities with great labor.
The Theological Faculty of Mainz, which has now flourished for fifty years to the great benefit of all, thus established in title 4, §2: “We do not wish any account of age or duration of studies to be taken in promotions unless the candidate is also commended by a knowledge of theological matters appropriate to the degree sought and by testimony of honorable conduct and life. For we altogether exclude from promotions infamous apostates or persons notoriously endowed with corrupt morals, however greatly they may excel in learning.”
For the loss of time without advancement contributes nothing to the matter. Nevertheless, it prescribed a period in §4: “Likewise, we establish and ordain that no one be admitted to the lecture or degree of biblical bachelors unless he has heard the ordinary lectures in theology for at least two years; but no one is to be admitted to the degree of bachelor of the Sentences before the completion of the third year, so that he may begin the lecture on the third book of the Sentences. Once this has been begun, they are considered formed bachelors. No one, however, shall obtain the degree of licentiate unless the fourth year of theological studies has elapsed.”
§ 9. Now the evils of academies must also be enumerated; for it is not the part of a writer on politics to conceal those things which break forth to the destruction of the entire state. First, in many places, unworthy men are promoted to academic honors. That is an ancient complaint, on account of which many hate the academies and some desire them to be overthrown. But they do so unjustly. How often are those men whom an honorable man would not wish to have as slaves raised to civil magistracies, tribunals, the diadem, and scepters by fear, hope, payment, and even shameful services? The wealth of the Church, too, frequently falls to the worst and not often to the best. What wonder is it, therefore, if the vices by which the whole state is oppressed also breathe upon academics and gradually infect them? Let us therefore acknowledge that it is so and that the most learned men never lack something to correct. They will not have me as an accuser of the academy.
The Council of Constance warned long ago: “Likewise, that wisdom may flourish hereafter and the studies of letters thrive, let no one be raised to the titles of degrees and honors unless he is fit, approved in morals and knowledge, and well deserving; nor let promotion be so slight and excessively precipitate. For, as is known and is ridiculous to many, many obtain the name of masters whom it would be more fitting still to be disciples. Those who act or proceed contrary to this are by the law itself to be deprived of the royal privileges granted to those same universities.”
The ambition of the unskilled imposed even upon the Pontiffs. Pierre Grégoire shows the practice in Book 18, chapter 9, §7. He relates that Julius III, the Supreme Pontiff, in a
constitution issued on the sixth of February 1552, corrected a certain abuse: many men ignorant of civil and canon law, aspiring unduly to the degree of doctor, under the pretext that by devoting labor to a university of general study they had advanced so far that they were fit, obtained or extorted a license from the Apostolic See enabling them to receive the insignia of a doctorate in the Roman Curia from some prelate or person established in ecclesiastical dignity, even by extorting favorable letters. Under the pretext of that license, without employing the examination required for this or the other necessary measures, contrary to the statutes of the sacred canons and the provision of law, and to the disgrace of the dignity of that doctorate, they caused themselves to be promoted to that degree. Consequently, the degree was cheapened by the foregoing practices. Correcting this, the Supreme Pontiff ordained that thereafter no one could be created a doctor in the city of Rome except by the College of Consistorial Advocates, notwithstanding privileges and licenses granted to the contrary.
In Melander, Book 1 of Serious Jests, there are verses against unlearned men in scholars’ gowns:
A bull creates you a doctor; the bull is your ornament. The bull gives you powers; the bull procures titles for you. But take care lest perhaps the bubble endure less long than you: You are a bubble of a man and a bubble-doctor; why, then, are you puffed up?
Hence today nothing is cheaper or more suspect than doctors made by bulls, although many possess distinguished learning, whereas those whom the Pontiff or Emperor honored with that distinction were customarily held in the highest place. Fraud is presumed—not indeed in a court of law, but in human opinion. Yet the error in the academies themselves is no smaller. I appeal to experience: let the doctors defend causes; let the masters dispute. Let Rhodes and the leap refute my suspicion.
The cause of so great an evil is gold, more powerful than the world itself. For while some academics gape after money, they prostitute their honors to anyone whatsoever; and the unskilled, who soften the severity of the examination by gifts, are far more welcome than those who present learning and a distinguished proof of doctrine. I believe that the poverty of academics sometimes casts them down to these petty gains; but anything else whatever should be done rather than dragging cattle and logs to the chairs of doctors. For men of such a kind should be promoted that, even if the laws perished, they would nevertheless teach and live rightly. I therefore propose these matters for consideration both by academics themselves and by princes.
§ 10. First: a doctorate in the theological, legal, or medical faculty can neither be received without mortal sin by one who knows himself to be unworthy nor be conferred by others if they know him to be unworthy. Thus Sylvester, “On Doctors,” §4; Navarrus, On the Sin of Masters and Doctors, chapter 25; Armilla; Álvaro Pelayo, Book 2 of The Lament of the Church; and Sá in the Aphorisms.
The reason is weighty: they deceive the state and the Church, and in a weighty matter. For men who would not dare to offer an unskilled flute-player for the prince’s pleasure do not fear to expose the salvation of peoples and princes to another man’s inexperience. Those degrees are given so that the Church may have competent doctors who resist heresies and convert unbelievers; princes and bishops therefore trust the academies, by which they cannot be deceived and mocked without grave wickedness. Through their own complaisance, those academies are guilty of all the evils that follow from it. If an ignorant theologian either betrays the faith through ignorance or, conscious of his weakness, flees adversaries; if an ignorant advocate ruins his client; if an inexperienced physician undertakes the care of a bedridden patient, they bind themselves by a deadly crime, because for the sake of gain they cast their neighbors into danger of salvation, life, and fortunes. And so that they might possess such power, they range about more freely, supported by academic authority.
To this is added the particular pledge and duty of each faculty. For the doctors who are in the academic senate are bound either by a promise or even by an oath not to admit the unfit. Our faculty in title 7, §4, binds all by an oath that, when they are lawfully asked, they will give faithful testimony concerning the bachelors in the theological faculty. Sylvester therefore rightly judges those who admit an unworthy man to be bound by perjury as well.
Although candidates may appear never likely to teach, plead causes, or indeed exercise the practice of medicine, so that danger seems absent, nevertheless a public testimony of learning cannot be decreed to the unlearned without mortal sin. For perhaps an occasion or necessity—as all human affairs are uncertain—will require it, and thus the person will bring nothing but an empty title and, if his ignorance has hitherto lain hidden, an authority that will do harm. It belongs to a prudent man to take care not to entrust a sword to a madman or the power of judging or teaching to an unskilled man. For although a madman sometimes uses a sword rightly, a sword is never rightly given to a madman. And although chance may sometimes make the work of an unskilled physician beneficial, nevertheless the rashness of the man who experiments with his art upon another’s body is wicked.
But if men furnished with the privilege and title of a doctor are never going to cause any harm, it is nevertheless a grave sin and destructive to the state to fasten the insignia of learned men upon foolish cattle. Nor can the most honorable will of princes and founders be frustrated without wickedness. For if it is in the interest of the whole state that cunning and crafty men not divert to themselves the rewards of brave and well-deserving men, it will certainly feel the greatest harm if men adorned with a false testimony of learning and prudence walk about who are so uncultivated that they can scarcely be taught. For besides the fact that those honors are utterly despised if they fall to the unworthy as well as the worthy, another evil also arises which has ruined many academies: the idleness and inactivity of all the youths and the dissoluteness and lusts breaking forth from them. For if rich ignorance as well as laborious knowledge leads to the citadel of academic honors, many will readily redeem themselves from the greatest labors of a long period by the loss of a few coins. Many universities experience the most sorrowful effects of this academic perfidy: in them no one has for many years been excluded from degrees, and an examination is conducted merely as a ceremony. For who is more diligent in letters in order to obtain a degree, or whose fear of rejection shakes off his listlessness, if he sees the unlearned rich standing in the highest place as though made more venerable by learning?
§ 11. Nor are the resources of an academy served by that prevarication. For after the insignia have been made common to the unworthy and the crowd has made them contemptible, the nobility first despised those honors, which it would never have done if it had recognized true testimonies of learning in them. This is a great wound to universities: to have lost the noblest part of the youth. I have seen the most noble young men—sons of magnates and kinsmen of princes—treat every branch of study assiduously and diligently and seek the testimonies of their masters, yet despise academic degrees, that is, public testimonies.
“For what is granted indiscriminately to the learned and the unlearned,” they said, “is not a testimony of learning, but a useless ceremony of idle and ambitious men.” Yet the Church by no means wishes doctors to be despised, since it entrusts so many and such great matters to them. The Council of Trent explained how much it grants to doctors in Session 22, chapter 2, On Reform: “Whoever is hereafter to be appointed to cathedral churches is not only to be fully endowed with birth, age, morals, life, and the other qualifications required by the sacred canons, but also to have been constituted beforehand in sacred orders for at least the space of six months. Information concerning these things, if there is no knowledge of him in the Curia or only recent knowledge, is to be obtained from the legates of the Apostolic See or the nuncios of the provinces, or from his ordinary, and, if he is lacking, from the nearest ordinaries. In knowledge, moreover, let him excel, in addition to these things, in such a manner that he can satisfy the necessity of the office to be imposed upon him. Therefore, he is beforehand to have been deservedly promoted in a university of studies as a master, doctor, or licentiate in sacred theology or canon law, or to be shown by the public testimony of some academy to be fit to teach others. But if he is a regular, let him have a similar attestation from the superiors of his religious order. All the aforesaid persons, however, from whom the information or attestation is to be obtained, shall be bound to report these things faithfully and without payment; otherwise, let them know that their consciences are gravely burdened, and that they shall have God and their superiors as avengers.”
§ 12. What more severe thing could be said by a general council against those who sell those public testimonies for little dinners and a few coins?
The same Synod in Session 24, chapter 18, On Reform, sets doctors over the examination of clerics: “Let these examiners be masters, doctors, or licentiates in theology or canon law, or other clerics or regulars, including those of the mendicant order, or even secular men who will appear more suitable for this. Let them all swear upon the Holy Gospels of God that, setting aside every human affection, they will discharge the office faithfully.”
But what will they judge concerning the knowledge of others if through their own ambition and academic perjury they themselves were made doctors? If the salt becomes insipid, with what will things be salted? In the same session, chapter 12, the Synod commands archdeacons to be masters or licentiates in theology or canon law; and in chapter 16, episcopal vicars are appointed. When the Church establishes these things, it ascribes as much to academic testimonies as it scarcely does to any other; and therefore it deservedly invokes God as avenger against prevaricators. The same reasoning applies to doctors of law and medicine. For almost the whole state is involved in the counsels of the former, and the lives of many men—including princes and magnates—in the knowledge of the latter.
§ 13. But what is to be said of masters of arts and bachelors? There are some who excuse the unworthy from mortal sin, whether unskilled men receive the degree or confer it. For no part of the state is entrusted to them; and therefore, although they adorn blockheads in gowns with a hood, cap, and ring, they will nevertheless deceive no one, because these men have not yet been applied to affairs.
I hold the contrary: that to adorn unworthy men with the insignia of the baccalaureate or philosophical mastership is a mortal sin. First, on account of the oath by which examiners in many academies are bound to promise that they will not admit the unworthy. Accordingly, the founders and academies that require the oath judge the matter to be grave; from this it follows that even those who, although they have not sworn an oath, are nevertheless bound by a promise of fidelity cannot give false public testimony in a grave matter without grave sin.
Next, many things are customarily entrusted even to masters of arts: the power of disputing, teaching, examining others, and promoting them. When this has been conferred upon the unskilled, those studies which are necessary to the state must suffer great harms; and since these are greater than monetary losses, a crime is discerned here also. For since the youth who devote themselves to philosophy in the academies are numerous, it is evident that by contempt for academic honors they extinguish the youths’ very ardor for study—that is, they deliberately corrupt youth itself. These honors are despised when they cease to be testimonies of learning. And the greater the apparatus of clothing, banquets, poems, and retinues with which those ceremonies are conducted, the greater the mockery in which they are held by those conscious of their own ignorance and that of others, because false testimonies and the frivolity of academics are paraded in a more conspicuous pomp.
There are not a few collegiate churches which require a baccalaureate or mastership; to deceive them is not only shameful but criminal. Finally, those who promote the unworthy gravely defame those whom they reject, since they cannot always promote everyone without overthrowing all discipline; for it is a great disgrace not to have had a place even among the unlearned, not to be even the lowest of the Mysians. And hence that contempt arises, since the first place is no great honor, while the last draws immense disgrace. But how shall I recognize the worthy and the unworthy? Or what are the standards of discrimination?
§ 14. It is a difficult matter, one which opens hiding places for excuses to those who dissolve discipline and measure academies not by the bloom and pursuit of the sciences but by empty displays. Nevertheless, I shall disclose those secrets and remove the pretexts.
Among those who are judged worthy of the doctorate, there is a great difference and, as philosophers say, latitude. Augustine and Jerome are doctors; yet Eucherius, Prosper, and others are not therefore unworthy of that name, for the Church had Augustine once, but it needs many doctors in every single year. Learning, therefore, is not to be exacted according to one standard. For who is now created a doctor or bishop who does not gladly and willingly confess himself Augustine’s disciple?
No one ought to be created master or doctor of a science if he cannot teach it; for masters and doctors are so named from teaching. Next, in most academies those who are promoted are bound to teach even by oath. The philosophical faculty requires this oath from its members: “Lastly, they shall swear that for one whole year after promotion they will remain in our faculty lecturing and teaching, and that in the same year they are willing once to preside over a public disputation.” How will a man swear that he will teach what he has not learned? This oath is an object of ridicule if an ass swears that he will teach letters.
The Church and the state established all those masterships and doctorates at so great an expense for teaching, as Sylvester excellently warned in “On Doctors,” §4. The canons teach that the Church refers not only philosophy and the higher studies but even the knowledge of languages to teaching. The whole matter
was expounded by Clement V in the Extravagantes, “On Masters,” chapter 1, at the Council of Vienne:
“Among the concerns resting upon our shoulders, we revolve with perpetual care how we may be able, with his grace cooperating with us, to lead those who err into the way of truth and gain them for God. This indeed is what we seek with desire; to this we diligently direct the affection of our mind; and about it we watch with diligent zeal and zealous diligence. We do not doubt that, for attaining a desire of this kind, an exposition of the divine utterances is fitting and the preaching of their faith exceedingly opportune. But neither are we ignorant that these things are proclaimed in vain and return empty if they are put forth to ears ignorant of the speaker’s language.
“Therefore, imitating the example of him whose place on earth we occupy, though unworthily, who willed that the Apostles who were to go throughout the entire world to evangelize should be learned in every kind of tongue, we earnestly desire the holy Church to abound in Catholic men having knowledge of the languages which the unbelievers chiefly use, men who know how and are able to instruct those unbelievers in the sacred institutes and to gather them into the fellowship of Christians through the doctrine of the Christian faith and reception of holy baptism.
“Therefore, that skill in languages of this kind might suitably be obtained through the efficacy of instruction, with this sacred council approving, we have provided for schools in the kinds of languages written below wherever the Roman Curia may happen to reside, and likewise in the universities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca. We establish that in each of these places there shall be Catholic men having sufficient knowledge of the Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldean languages—namely, two men skilled in each language—who shall govern schools there, faithfully translate books from those languages into Latin, and diligently teach those languages to others and transmit skill in them to those others by zealous instruction, so that, sufficiently instructed and taught in languages of this kind, they may, with God as author, be able to produce the hoped-for fruit and beneficially propagate the faith among the unbelieving peoples themselves.
“We wish competent stipends and expenses to be provided for those teaching in the Roman Curia by the Apostolic See; in the University of Paris by the King of France; at Oxford by the prelates, monasteries, chapters, convents, exempt and non-exempt colleges, and rectors of churches of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; at Bologna by those of Italy; and at Salamanca by those of Spain—imposing upon each the burden of contribution according to the measure of its resources. No privileges and exemptions whatsoever to the contrary shall stand in the way; nevertheless, we do not wish prejudice to be generated for them in other respects.”
This consideration ought to move all academics to admit candidates to honors with great selectivity and a severe examination. They will easily accomplish this if they judge the preservation of sound doctrine, and consequently of the state, to depend upon their fidelity. And when they observe bishops, kings, and princes seeking learned and industrious men for the Church and state with such concern, such expense, and such privileges, they will understand that it is an example of the worst kind for the very sanctuaries of the sciences to hold them in contempt and blunt the eagerness of those who learn.
§ 15. Once this has been established, let them test the learning of their hearers by an examination that is varied and not slight. The Academy of Mainz has strict laws, worthy of flourishing everywhere. For if anyone seeks academic honors in the theological faculty, it is first necessary that before the senate he have the testimony of his professors concerning the duration, exercises, and progress of his studies. Unless they testify that he appears worthy to undergo examination, he is repelled from the threshold. Next, after he has been admitted, he is compelled to prove his learning in five public disputations.
The jurists exercise their candidates in such a way that, if they approve a man in the first disputation, they then assign him another law, for the exposition and defense of which he prepares himself in the space of twenty-four hours. This interrogation and testing is so serious that no one readily commits himself to the hazard unless he is properly instructed. The physicians also have strict laws in examination and serious disputations, so much so that no unlearned man easily knocks here at the doors of the doctorate.
The faculty of liberal arts, in addition to daily exercises and the testimonies of professors, institutes examinations in all the arts, including eloquence, poetry, and mathematics, and, by testing each man separately, examines almost the whole of philosophy. For all the examiners promise that they will admit no one insufficient or inadequately qualified: § “Promise of the Masters Who Examine.” There is, therefore, one examination which lasts through the entire duration of the studies, while the candidates either prove their progress in their own school, with their master and fellow students as witnesses, or offer a specimen of their ability in public disputations throughout the year and in the assembly of all the philosophers. There is another examination, in which they are questioned privately by masters appointed for that task.
Although at the entrance to the examination those masters furnish only a promise, they are nevertheless bound by oath from another cause as well. Before promotion, among other things, they swear thus: “Likewise, that they will give faithful testimony concerning bachelors to be promoted in the faculty whenever they shall have been duly required concerning this matter”: § “Oath of Those Receiving the License and Insignia.”
Through neglect of this care and precaution, not only unlearned men but even heretics are intruded into churches and academies in other universities; for unlearned academies cannot even recognize subtler heresies, much less keep them out. “It has also greatly harmed the state,” says Pierre Grégoire in Book 18, chapter 9, On the State, “that some professors are found to possess a conscience insufficiently fearful and, often granting degrees through favor to profane men, do not consider what Arcadian beast they thrust into churches and benches. Nor do they consider that they will render an account before God and men for so great a negligence in approving studies. They also sometimes thrust heretics into chairs, from whom poison and destruction, or a plague of the state, must follow. In correcting these things, diligent reform is needed. It will be easy for rectors and conservators, or bishops and princes, if studies are recalled to the end intended at their foundation, if learned men of good conscience and sound faith are placed in command, and if those who obstinately persevere in error or malice are corrected.”
§ 16. But if the academics themselves lay aside the care of their own affairs and undertake no labor either for their reputation or for the safety of the state, that care will fall upon bishops and princes. Albert of Brandenburg, cardinal of the Holy Roman Church and archbishop of Mainz, did this, as both the acts and the preface of the statutes of the faculty of arts attest. I am not ignorant that visitation and reform appear difficult and harsh. But it is better that learned men be admonished and academies restored than that youth perish. Nor can a means of correcting everything be lacking.
First, let all licentiates and doctors also be examined for nominations to benefices and for orders; and let the academic judgment not be relied upon if the unskilled are customarily promoted by it to degrees. Lawsuits and disturbances will arise from this, but a prince will easily
quiet those evils—otherwise he will leave them in place.
“A prelate,” says Pierre Grégoire in Book 18, chapter 9, “appears to do injury to a university by wishing to examine one of its graduates; indeed, it would be an injury to princes that those whom they themselves judge fit should be considered unworthy. In other cases the law requires inquiry into the fitness of those seeking a grant and does not wish a person to be examined when he has already been approved.
“Thus a bishop cannot examine a person presented by an abbot, since the abbot’s testimony is sufficient. For if an examination of graduates, nominees, or persons presented by universities and abbots were granted to a bishop, he would never find a graduate or nominee learned or sufficient—even if he were like Bartolus or Panormitanus—unless that graduate were agreeable to them. This also has place among those pharisaical censors, the bishop’s vicars, who are blinded by such stupidity, presumption, and pride that they think no one knows anything unless he flatters or applauds them—unskilled men who think nothing right except what they themselves do. Therefore, one must always presume rather in favor of an act of the university, if it was done in due form, and in favor of the fitness of the person.”
Thus he speaks most excellently and prudently concerning reform. Nevertheless, I do not agree when he denies that a graduate ought to be examined. For if there is a probable cause for doubting his learning, a bishop not only can but also ought to examine the man whom he places over souls. Pierre himself admits in the same chapter, §6: “From the abuse and corruption of professors, as we have learned by experience, many disadvantages and evils can be introduced into the state, especially when degrees are conferred upon the unworthy and by the marketing of money.” If he learned this by experience, and if bishops and princes learn it daily through the evils and disadvantages of the state, why ought they to endure those evils rather than examine the man in doubt?
The Council of Trent, Session 7, chapter 13, subjects all to examination except those who are presented by universities: “Those presented, elected, or nominated by any ecclesiastical persons whatsoever, even the nuncios of the Apostolic See, shall not be instituted, confirmed, or admitted to any ecclesiastical benefices whatsoever, even under the pretext of any privilege or custom, even one prescribed from time immemorial, unless they have first been examined by the ordinaries of the places and found fit. And no one can protect himself by the remedy of appeal so as not to be bound to undergo examination. Those presented, elected, or nominated by universities or colleges of general studies are nevertheless excepted.”
But in Session 24, chapter 18, the exception nevertheless appears to be revoked, when the Council had perceived more and more that the integrity of universities was corrupted. For since unlearned doctors do not enjoy the privilege, academies that promote the unlearned cannot communicate privileges to them; therefore, the unlearned cannot use the privileges of doctors. Thus Grégoire himself, Book 18, chapter 9: “Nor ought an unlearned doctor to enjoy the privilege of doctors.”
And certainly men who are doctors in title alone, and those who through neglect of study have lost what they once learned, would be worthy of being examined again—not indeed by those who wish to appear rabbis, for the blind would lead the blind, but by learned masters, approved professors of good conscience who fear God, and by rectors and reformers of schools. These are certainly no less necessary in the state than visitors of churches. But men should be deputed who are most skilled in reforming the professions or faculties, who have discharged the office of professor with praise, and who are veterans and emeriti—not men from elsewhere or of another kind.
Nor do we deny that we judge it both equitable and beneficial to the state that a man once approved as a doctor can be rejected again if he is afterward found insufficient by the aforesaid reformers or by the very masters who approved him before; indeed, he can be deprived of the insignia, or at least the privileges, unless his knowledge was lost by accident, disease, or old age.
Thus the emperor Gordian: “It is not unknown that grammarians or orators approved by a decree of the order can be rejected again by the same order if they do not show themselves useful to students.” For public utility is involved in these men also, since on account of the presumption of learning doctors are admitted to many public offices and ecclesiastical benefices, and their inexperience harms many people who are thus deceived. Therefore, a person examined and approved for the degree of licentiate can be rejected in the examination for doctors when through a new cause he has been able to render himself useless—for example, if there is a great interval of time between the licentiate or prolytate and the doctorate sought, or because he was approved in only one examination and others remain—according to the observations of Abbot Panormitanus.
Thus Sylvester, “On Doctors,” §5: “Fifth, it is asked what things are required in one who is to be made a doctor, so that he may not be rejected but approved. And I say that a scholar can be rejected not only on account of a deficiency of knowledge—which is, of course, to be judged sufficient at the discretion of those making him a doctor—but also on account of morals, as is proved in law Magistros, Code, On Professors and Physicians, Book 10, joined with Clementine 11, On Masters; and custom observes this. Hence six things are required in one who is to be promoted to the dignity of mastership. First, skill in teaching, that is, knowledge. Second, eloquence in teaching. Third, subtlety in interpreting. Fourth, abundance in teaching. And these are found in the sole law of the Code, On Professors Who Are in the City of Constantinople, Book 12. Fifth, excellence of morals, as in the aforesaid law Magistros. Sixth, strength of courage, so that he knows how to resist the force of violence, law Reddatur, Code, On Professors and Physicians, Book 10. Hence few attain the dignity of the doctorate, as Bartolus says after Cynus in law Omnes populi, Digest, On Justice and Law.
“And one who possessed these conditions at the time of approval, if he afterward becomes useless, is to be degraded from the doctorate, as in law Grammaticos, Code, On Professors and Physicians, Book 10. For a doctor or master can be rejected, as in law 11 of the Code under the same title, and Bartolus notes in law Sed et reprobari, Digest, On the Excuses of Guardians, at the beginning, where the text says that a physician can be rejected; and the same in law Ut gradatim, § Reprobari, Digest, On Public Duties and Honors—but not without cause: law Pomponius scribit, Digest, On the Management of Affairs.”
If, therefore, that doctor is to be degraded, he cannot be capable of nominations, for the law speaks of learned men who have been lawfully promoted. This can readily be recognized from the concordats of France and the Supreme Pontiff. The words of the agreement are: “But when a vacancy of this kind occurs in those cathedral churches, the King of France then reigning shall, within six months reckoned from the day of the vacancy of those churches, nominate to us and our successors, the Roman Pontiffs, or to the aforesaid See, one grave master or licentiate in theology, or doctor or licentiate in both laws or either law, from a renowned university and with rigorous examination, and established in at least the twenty-seventh year of his age; and provision shall be made for the person so nominated by the king, by us and our successors, or by the aforesaid See.”
Who doubts that in the Council of Trent the Church seeks such a man as it describes in the French concordats?
§ 17. From Rebuffus, moreover, I learn that there are various titles of promotion in French and neighboring academies. For certain universities do not confer the license with this clause: “by rigor of examination,” but either with the clause “by grace,” for the ignorant; or “by good justice,” for the moderately learned; or “by good and pure justice,” for the rich
and citizens; or “by good and pure justice and for merit,” for the most learned or those possessing favor. No one fails to see that these titles are the destruction of all the arts and sciences, since the most learned man and the rich man, the most learned man and the man who is favored, are imposed upon the state with the same commendation.
If, therefore, in the Chinese manner the titular little doctors and little masters are recalled to the anvil by the laws of Europe, if academics are bound by a new oath, if other theologians already tested are ordered to be present at the examination, and if several doctors of law hear the candidates being examined, the integrity of the academies will easily be restored. The sum is this: if an academy persists in promoting the unworthy, let it be punished; and, if necessary, let the authors of destructive favor fall from their dignities. This care pertains no less to the prince than the restoration of roads, citadels, and a fleet, and all the more as the offense brings greater danger.
Formerly impostors, for the sake of gain, falsely said that they had been promoted and undertook to teach; the magistrate proceeded severely against them. Panormitanus in chapter Quoniam, Extravagantes, On Masters, and the other doctors in law Eos, On Forgeries, relate that this was done deservedly. It is not much less serious to lie about learning than about promotion; for promotion is the sign of learning, which those men falsely display. For that man too is an impostor who hangs ivy upon an empty cask and displays to wretched hearers the shadow of titles without the body of learning.
§ 18. Finally, let new and rival academies be erected to stir the torpor of the old. Many ancient ones are, as it were, exhausted, flourishing neither in youth nor in masters. They have unlearned what they knew. Seekers after reputation who now act the doctor at leisure console their solitude with applause for antiquity and do not repair their strength and former vigor, like that man of whom Lucan sings:
The shadow of a great name stands, like a lofty oak in a fruitful field, bearing the ancient spoils of a people and consecrated gifts of commanders, no longer clinging by strong roots. Fixed by its own weight, spreading naked branches through the air, it makes a shadow with its trunk, not its foliage. But although it totters, destined to fall beneath the first east wind, though so many woods around rise with firm strength, it alone is nevertheless revered.
In its neighborhood, at a lawful interval, let a prince who loves learning establish one that is vigorous, exercised by labor, and gleaming with new youth. Such an academy, I say, in which there is not only the name and reputation of an academy, but:
Virtue that knows not how to stand in place, and the only shame—not to conquer. As a soldier, this novice will strike the enemy squadrons with brave assault, fierce and untamed, wherever mind and laws have called him to bring his hand, and fearing no labors of study; pressing his successes, urging on the favor of the divine power, driving away whatever envy casts before one seeking glorious things.
Make trial, prince: rival excellence will furnish spurs.
§ 19. Nor, however, should another means of preserving and enlarging academies be left unmentioned. Let provision be made for theologians and philosophers with a stipend that is not merely just and lawful but ample. Let a still richer grant be conceded to jurists and physicians. For since Galen gives wealth, since the practice of an excellent physician produces great gain, he cannot be bound to a chair and daily lectures by a slender salary. Therefore, let his honorarium be so great that he neither visits patients nor is compelled to visit them; indeed, let this very thing be forbidden to him. It will be sufficient if he teaches others and is consulted by the rest.
Justinian supplies riches and honors. Therefore, so great a salary should be established for a professor of civil and even canon law that he neither courts the prince’s chancery nor admires the swift wealth and increases of advocates who are overwhelmed by crowds of clients. For it cannot be hoped that a man will endure the continual labors of a chair for five hundred gold pieces when many princes invite him with lavish stipends and great honors and magnates demand him as advocate in the greatest causes. Great doctors, therefore, must be hired at great expense. For to appoint over novices a man to teach laws to noble youth who has never won a cause, nor indeed could even have lost one because no client so simple was found as to entrust a dispute over dripping water to him, is just as if you were to appoint over recruits a commander who had seen no camp.
§ 20. Finally, let it also be a care of the state to furnish the best possible libraries of all the sciences, not merely for the adornment of the city but rather for the use of learned men. For as the founding of a library does not belong to private means, so it belongs especially to public magnificence—and indeed to the most useful magnificence of all.
Most noble was the library of Ptolemy, concerning which Philo, Josephus, Livy, Seneca, and Aulus Gellius write, although there is some discrepancy between Seneca and Gellius. Seneca, On Tranquillity of Mind, chapter 9: “I shall take account even of expenditure upon studies, which is the most liberal expenditure, for so long as it retains measure. To what end are innumerable books and libraries, whose owner scarcely reads their catalogues in his whole life? A multitude burdens the learner; it does not instruct him. It is much better to entrust yourself to a few authors than to wander through many. Four hundred thousand books burned at Alexandria, a most beautiful monument of royal opulence. Let another man praise it, as Livy does, who says that this work was outstanding for the elegance and care of kings. That was not elegance or care but studious luxury—indeed, not even studious, since they had procured them not for study but for display, just as for most men ignorant even of the literature of slaves, books are not instruments of study but ornaments of dining rooms. Therefore, let as many books as are sufficient be procured, nothing for show.”
Aulus Gellius in Book 6, final chapter, says that there were seven hundred thousand volumes. I do not approve Seneca’s reproach. He answers himself well: “‘More honorably,’ you say, ‘would I have poured out expenditures upon these than upon Corinthian bronzes and painted panels.’ What is excessive is vicious everywhere.” Again he objects: “For whom do you have less pardon: one who seeks a name from marble and ivory, or one who seeks out the works of either unknown or disapproved authors and yawns among so many thousands of books, taking the greatest pleasure in the fronts and titles of his volumes? Among the most idle men, therefore, you will see whatever there is of speeches and histories, and shelves constructed up to the ceiling. For now, among baths and hot rooms, a library too is fitted out as a necessary ornament of a house. I would plainly pardon it if it arose from an excessive desire for studies; but now those carefully sought-out works of sacred talents, copied with portraits of their authors, are procured for the appearance and decoration of walls.”
He says only this rightly: that works of disapproved authors are not to be sought, and that among so many good authors studies are not to be neglected. The Alexandrian library deservedly burned in civil war, for it was full not only of books by impious philosophers
but also of superstitious books by magicians and documents of forbidden arts. But it is exceedingly useful for the state to procure in an academy, and for the use of others, an abundance of the best books; for nothing more retards the abilities of many men than a lack of books.
Jerome on Psalm 1 wonderfully commends the library at Caesarea, founded by Julius Africanus and enlarged by Pamphilus and Eusebius, which he himself often consulted. Although it had declined a little at that time, it was most renowned, as was the Alexandrian library. At Athens, the tyrant Pisistratus was the first to make books available for public reading. The Athenians afterward furnished a library; but after the city of Athens was burned in the common ruin of the Greeks, Xerxes sent the library into Persia. Seleucus restored it to the Athenians when, in turn, the plunder of the Elamites was carried back into Greece.
Aristotle himself also left a library to Theophrastus, while Theophrastus handed it on to Neleus. Neleus carried it to Scepsis, Strabo says, and left it to descendants who were unskilled men and kept the books shut up and carelessly stored. When they perceived the zeal of the Attalid kings for gathering books into the library at Pergamum, they concealed them in a certain pit. After the books had been corrupted by moths and dampness, they sold them to Apellicon of Teos for a great sum of silver—the Aristotelian and Theophrastan books, that is. But Apellicon, because he was more devoted to books than to wisdom and wished to repair the corrosions, had them copied, the writing being incorrectly supplied. He therefore published books full of errors.
Consequently, the ancient Peripatetics after Theophrastus, since they altogether lacked the standard books except for a few exoteric discourses, had nothing upon which to philosophize securely, but produced certain theses by night labor. Later men, however, after these books came to light, philosophized far better than the earlier men by imitating Aristotle. Yet because of the multitude of errors, they were compelled to say merely plausible things.
But among the ancients Theodosius shone with great praise. He surpassed Ptolemy in zeal for books and in prudence of collection, for he placed all the best codices of the holy fathers in his library and copied many with his own hand, as Nicephorus is the authority in Book 14, chapter 3. The Church of Hagia Sophia, the noblest that Constantinople possessed, preserved one hundred thousand books in its library.
Before our times Lorenzo de’ Medici of Florence, through Markos Mousouros of Crete, searched the hidden libraries of Greece and furnished that noble library at Florence. Victor writes that formerly there were twenty-nine public libraries at Rome. The most noble are now the Vatican and Venetian libraries. Augustus, as Suetonius relates in chapter 29, built at home the Temple of Apollo in that part of the Palatine house which the soothsayers declared to be desired by the god because it had been struck by lightning. He added porticoes with a Latin and Greek library, in which place, now advanced in age, he often also held the senate and reviewed the panels of judges.
Domitian too restored the libraries consumed by fire, as the same Tranquillus relates, for he took care that corrected copies be transcribed from everywhere. Constantine the Great did the same at Constantinople. Nor does the statement that a multitude of books is said to disturb the mind establish anything against libraries, for since there are many men in the state, it is fitting to construct them for many. Each man will read whatever books he wishes according to his ability. And it is surely necessary to have read many and seen many. “Would,” says Saint Jerome in Epistle 40, “that I possessed the volumes of all commentators, so that I might compensate for slowness of ability by diligence in learning.” And: “I take many things into my hand, and from many men I shall learn many things.”
§ 21. Therefore, the state will open the best library to men devoted to studies; and, that this beneficence may not be momentary, it will prescribe these laws:
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Let no persons enter without the librarian’s permission.
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Let no one be admitted unless of tested fidelity and probity.
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Let books of all faculties be arranged in good order.
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Let all books display externally in a title their subject and the author’s name.
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Let there be another book containing a catalogue of all books in alphabetical order.
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In that catalogue, let the author’s name, the subject of the book, its size, and its color be described.
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Let no one, not even the librarian himself or a consul, be permitted to carry a book out unless a signed acknowledgment has been given.
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If anyone carries one out, let him return it after a month.
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Let them take care of the cleanliness of the library and the books.
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Twice each year let the librarian admonish the senate concerning the purchase of new books.
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Let forbidden books be exiled.
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Let no one impress a mark upon books either with ink or by folding back the paper.
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But if the state shrinks from the expense, let it add another law, troublesome for enlarging the library and reducing expenditures.
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If anyone increases the library by a book, let it be deemed a good deed; let the librarian courteously preserve his memory.
§ 22. The custom of academies indeed provides that doctors be created by doctors, theologians by theologians, jurists by jurists, physicians by physicians, and masters by masters. Nevertheless, it is not contrary to laws and common law for any men to be promoted by any men; there is no difficulty in the matter, nor are we forbidden by any law. The objection of those who deny that anyone can give what he does not possess is excessively crude. You would think them speaking about a ball or a knucklebone, not about a right or dignity, which is conferred even by one who does not possess a right or dignity of the same name but another, more eminent one.
An academic degree was formerly the ornament of magnates. Our archbishopric certainly had two doctors, Uriel and Sebastian. The two lights of Germany, Julius of Würzburg and Johann Gottfried, prelate of Bamberg and Würzburg, also possessed academic degrees. I pass over Philip II of Speyer; Matthew of Worms; Henry IV and Christopher of Augsburg; Reichwin, Duke of Lorraine and bishop of Strasbourg; Albert I, Count of Hohenberg and bishop of Würzburg. Eichstätt also had two prelates who were doctors, Philip and Johann III; Brescia and other dioceses have them now.