Be it noted that until Merton's day people had never heard of what we now understand by a _college_. It was a novelty in English institutions. Men and women had lived commonly enough in societies that were essentially religious in their character. Some of those societies, and only some, had drifted into becoming the quiet homes of learning as well as of devotion; but the main business-the _raison d'être_ of monks and nuns and canons-was the practice of asceticism, the keeping up of unceasing worship in the church of the monastery--the endeavour to be holier than men of the world need be, or the endeavour to make the men of the world holier than they cared to be. The religious orders were religious or they were nothing. Each new rule for the reformation of those orders aimed at restoring the primitive idea of self-immolation at the altar--a severer ritual, harder living, longer praying. Nay! the new rules, in not a few instances, were actually aimed against learning and culture. The Merton Rule was a bringer in of new things. Merton would not call his society of scholars a _convent_, as the old monkish corporations had been designated. That sounded too much as though the mere promotion of pietism was his aim; he revived the old classical word _collegium_. There had been _collegia_ at Rome before the imperial times; though some of them had been religious bodies, some were decidedly not so. They were societies which held property, pursued certain avocations, and acted in a corporate capacity for very mundane objects. Why should not there be a _collegium_ of scholars? Why should students and men of learning be expected to be holier than other people? When Merton started his college at Oxford, he made it plain by his statutes that he did not intend to found a society after the old conventual type, but to enter upon a new departure. The scholars of the new college were to take no vows; they were not to be worried with everlasting ritual observances. Special chaplains, who were presumably not expected to be scholars and students, were appointed for the ministration of the ceremonial in the church. Luxury was guarded against; poverty was not enjoined. As long as a scholar was pursuing his studies _bonâ fide_, he might remain a member of the college; if he was tired of books and bookish people, he might go.