Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776: June 2011 (Sixth) EditionReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776: June 2011 (Sixth) Edition
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Political songs and poems were written about the evil times of King
Edward II, the military triumphs of King Edward III, and the complaints
of the poor against their oppressors, such as "Song of the Husbandman".
John Gower wrote moralizing poems on the villein's revolt, the sins of
the clergy and attorneys, and the bad rule of King Richard II, who in
1377 succeeded Edward III. Robin Hood ballads were popular. The
minstrel, who was a honorable person, replaced the troubadour of older
times.
There were many colleges at Oxford and Cambridge due to the prohibition
of gifts to the church. Laymen instead of ecclesiastics were appointed
as Chancellor. The Masters at Oxford got rid of ecclesiastical
supervision by a bishop and archdeacon by 1368. One could be admitted as
a student at age thirteen. The rate of maintenance for a student was
10d. weekly.
A Bachelor of Arts degree was granted after four years of study and an
oral exam. Required reading in 1340 for the Bachelor's Degree was the
new logic of Aristotle ("Prior and Posterior Analytics" e.g. on
syllogistic logic and deduction, the "Topics", or the "Sophistical
Refutations", e.g. logical fallacies such as from 'All A are B' to 'All
B are A'), and a selection from these Aristotle works on physics: "Of
Heaven and Earth", "On the Soul", "Of meteors", "Of Birth and Decay", or
"Of Feeling and What is Felt" with "Of Memory and Recollection" and "Of
Sleep and Waking", or "Of the Movement of Animals" with "Of Minor Points
in Natural History".
A Master of Arts degree could be awarded after three more years of
study and teaching. A Doctorate degrees in theology required ten more
years of study. A Doctorate in civil or canon law required eight more
years. A man with a degree in canon law who wanted to practice in a
certain bishop's court had to first satisfy this bishop of his
competence.
Another source of legal learning was in London, where the guilds gave
rise to the Inns of Court. They used the Register of Writs, the case law
of the Year Books, and disputation to teach their students.
For a doctorate in medicine from Oxford or Cambridge, five more years
plus two years of practice were required. Surgery was not taught because
it was considered manual labor, and there was some feeling that it was a
sacrilege and dishonorable. Urinalysis and pulse beat were used for
diagnosis. Epilepsy and apoplexy were understood as spasms inside the
head. It was known what substances served as laxatives and diuretics.
Teeth were extracted, eye cataracts were removed with a silver needle,
and skin from the arm was grafted onto a mutilated face.
Englishmen who had collected books on philosophy, medicine, astronomy,
and history and literature books from the continent gave their
collections to the universities, which started their libraries. Paper
supplemented parchment, so there were more books.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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