y, from which we have already
quoted, the Parisian masters speak of their venerable "gignasium
litterarum" as divided into four faculties, Theology, Law, Medicine,
and Philosophy, and they compare the four streams of learning to the
four rivers of Paradise. The largest and most important was the
Faculty of Arts, and the masters of that Faculty were the protagonists
in the struggle with the Chancellor, a struggle which continued long
after the intervention of Innocent III. In the course of this long and
successful conflict, the Faculty of Arts developed an internal
organisation, consisting of four nations, distinguished as the French,
the Normans, the Picards, and the English. Each nation elected a
proctor, and the four proctors or other representatives of the (p. 044)
nations elected a Rector, who was the Head of the Faculty of Arts.
The division into nations and the title of Rector may have been copied
from Bologna, but the organisation at Paris was essentially different.
The Parisian nations were governed by masters, not by students, and
whereas, at Bologna, the artists were an insignificant minority, at
Paris, the Rector became, by the end of the thirteenth century, the
most powerful official of the University, and, by the middle of the
fourteenth, was recognised as its Head. The superior Faculties of
Theology, Canon Law, and Medicine, though they possessed independent
constitutions under their own Deans, consisted largely of men who had
taken a Master's or a Bachelor's degree in Arts, and, from the middle
of the thirteenth century, they took an oath to the Rector, which was
held to be binding even after they became doctors. The non-artist
members of these Faculties were not likely to be able to resist an
authority whose existence was generally welcomed as the centre of the
opposition to the Chancellor. Ultimately, the whole University passed
under the sway of the Rector, and the power of the Chancellor was
restricted to granting the _jus ubique docendi_ as the representative
of the Pope. Even this was little more than a formality, for the
Chancellor "ceased," says Dr Rashdall, "to have any real control over
the grant or refusal of Licences, except in so far as he retained (p. 045)
the nomination of the Examiners in Arts."

At Oxford, the University was also a Guild of masters, but Oxford was
not a cathedral city, and there was no conflict with the Bishop or the
Chancellor. In the end of the twelfth or the begin