Oxford was, after Paris, ‘_schola secunda ecclesiæ_.’ FOOTNOTES: [1] It is perhaps needless to observe that ‘universitas’ signifies a ‘corporation’ or guild, and implies no universality in the range of subjects taught, or _Universitas Facultatum_. ‘Studium Generale’ probably signifies a place of education open to all comers. [2] See the Introduction to Anstey’s _Munimenta Academica_, pp. xxxv. et sqq. CHAPTER II. THE EARLY COLLEGES. [Sidenote: Rise of Colleges] By far the most important event in the academical history of the thirteenth century was the foundation of University, Balliol, and Merton Colleges. The idea of secular colleges, it is true, was not wholly new. Harold’s foundation at Waltham, afterwards converted into an abbey, was originally non-monastic, and designed to be a home for secular priests, but it was not an educational institution. There were colleges for the maintenance of poor scholars at Bologna; rather, however, in the nature of the Oxford halls. If the founders of the earliest Oxford college were indebted for their inspiration to any foreign source, they must have derived it from the great French University in Paris, of which the collegiate system already formed a distinctive feature. Not to speak of still more ancient colleges at Paris, either attached to monasteries or serving the purpose of mere lodging-houses, the Sorbonne, founded about 1250, furnishes a striking precedent for its Oxford successors, as an academical cloister specially planned for the education of the secular clergy. Nevertheless, there is no proof that its constitution was actually imitated or studied by the founder of any Oxford college, and there is one important difference between the Paris and Oxford colleges, that whereas the former were appropriated to special faculties, the latter welcomed students in all faculties. It is, therefore, by no means improbable that in the development of the college system, as in the original incorporation of schools into an academical body, like causes produced like results by independent processes at the French and English Universities. [Sidenote: Foundation of University and Balliol]