70--probably
the latter years of that period--saw the birth of the University of
Paris." Such organisation as existed in the twelfth century was slight
and customary, depending, as the student-universities of Bologna and
in other medieval guilds, upon no external authority. The successors
of these early masters, writing in the middle of the thirteenth
century, relate how their predecessors, men reverend in character (p. 042)
and famous for learning, decided, as the number of their pupils
increased, that they could do their work better if they became a
united body, and that they therefore formed themselves into a College
or University, on which Church and State conferred many privileges.
The bond of union they describe as a "jus speciale" ("si quodam essent
juris specialis vinculo sociati"), and this conception explains the
appearance of their earliest code of statutes in the first decade of
the thirteenth century. The Guild of masters, at Paris, like the Guild
of students at Bologna, could use with advantage the threat of a
migration, and, after a violent quarrel with the town in the year
1200, they received special privileges from Philip Augustus. Some
years later, Pope Innocent III. permitted the "scholars of Paris" to
elect a procurator or proctor to represent their interests in law-suits
at Rome. Litigation at Rome was connected with disputes with the
Chancellor of the Cathedral. Already the scholars of Paris had
complained to the Pope about the tyranny of the Chancellor, and
Innocent had supported their cause, remarking that when he himself
studied at Paris he had never heard of scholars being treated in this
fashion. It moved and astonished the Pope not a little that the
Chancellor should attempt to exact an oath of obedience and payment
of money from the masters, and, in the end, that official was (p. 043)
compelled to give up his claim to demand fees or oaths of fealty or
obedience for a licence to teach, and to relax any oaths that had
already been taken. The masters, as Dr Rashdall points out, already
possessed the weapon of boycotting, and ordering their students to
boycott, a teacher upon whom the Chancellor conferred a licence
against the wish of their guild, but they could not at first compel
him to grant a licence to anyone whom they desired to admit. After the
Papal intervention of 1212, the Chancellor was bound to licence a
candidate recommended by the masters.

In the account of their own histor