if only moderate progress were made, the secular duties of the college devolved upon them. It was the foundation of these colleges which organised themselves, about 1200, into powerful corporations of masters and scholars (_universitates magistrorum et scholiarum_) that gave the university its definite character. When the term "university" first came into use is unknown. It is met with in the statutes (1215) which, among other matters, define the limits of age for teaching. A master in the arts must not lecture under twenty-one; of theology under thirty-five. Every master must undergo an examination as to qualification and moral fitness at the Episcopal Chancellor's court. Early in the twelfth century the four faculties of Law, Medicine, Arts and Theology were formed and the national groups reduced to four: French, Picards, Normans and English.[69] Each group elected its own officers, and in 1245 at latest the _Quatre Nations_ were meeting in the church of St. Julien le Pauvre[70] to choose a common head or rector, who soon superseded the chancellor as head of the university. The rectors in process of time exercised almost sovereign authority in the Latin Quarter. They ruled a population of ten thousand masters and students, who were exempt from civic jurisdiction. In 1200 some German students ill-treated an innkeeper who had insulted their servant. The provost of Paris and some armed citizens attacked the students' houses and blood was shed, whereupon the masters of the schools complained to the king, who was fierce in his anger, and ordered the provost and his accomplices to be cast into prison, their houses demolished and vines uprooted. The provost was given the choice of imprisonment for life or the ordeal by water. Then followed a series of ordinances which abolished secular jurisdiction over the students and made them subject to ecclesiastical courts alone. [Illustration: HÔTEL OF THE PROVOST OF PARIS.] In the reign of Philip le Bel a provost of Paris dared to hang a scholar. The rector immediately closed all classes until reparation was made, and on the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin the _curés_ of Paris assembled and went in procession, bearing a cross and holy water to the provost's house, against which each cast a stone, crying, in a loud voice--"Make honourable reparation, thou cursed Satan, to thy mother Holy Church, whose privileges thou hast injured, or suffer the fate of Dathan and Abiram." The king dismissed his provost, caused ample compensation to be made, and the schools were reopened.