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  • University Education of the Parochial Clergy in Medieval England: The Lincoln Diocese, c. 1300–c. 1350 by F. Donald Logan
  • R. N. Swanson
University Education of the Parochial Clergy in Medieval England: The Lincoln Diocese, c. 1300–c. 1350. By F. Donald Logan. [Studies and Texts 188.] (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 2014. Pp. xiv, 197. $80.00. ISBN 978-0-88844-181-1.)

In this short volume, Donald Logan provides a compact but comprehensive analysis of the licenses for nonresidence to attend university that were granted to parochial rectors in the English Diocese of Lincoln during the first half of the fourteenth century. The voluminous episcopal registers for those decades record thousands of administratively ephemeral documents not normally preserved elsewhere, including more than 1200 licenses allowing parish rectors to be nonresident so they could pursue study yet retain their ecclesiastical incomes. Many of the licenses were issued in accordance with the papal constitution Cum ex eo, promulgated by Pope Boniface VIII in 1298. This permitted absence for up to seven years by rectors who might initially be merely acolytes or subdeacons. Other licenses of shorter duration were granted by the bishops on their own authority to rectors who were usually priests. (Incumbent vicars were denied such opportunities: their cures required permanent residence.) [End Page 392]

The book divides almost exactly into two halves. The first segment offers analysis and commentary, and is short enough to be read (but perhaps not fully digested) at one sitting. The second half consists of an alphabetical register of the recipients of the nonresidence licenses, detailing the grants, adding occasional further references, and providing cross-references to Alfred Brotherton Emden’s Biographical Registers for the few recipients (under 5 percent) who appear in them. That percentage alone suggests the value of this study for future work on university attendance in pre-Reformation England.

Logan’s first-half commentary is essentially a quantitative dissection of the information provided by the licenses, preceded by an introduction and an initial chapter offering orientation on “Canon Law and Clerical Learning.” Chapters 2 to 4 offer a chronological analysis, its periodization shaped by episcopates. That of John Dalderby (1299–1320) provides “the beginning”; under Henry Burghersh (1320–40) licensing is “in full stride”; “the process continues” in the 1340s. More extensive investigation is abruptly curtailed by the administrative changes that ended the routine registration of such licenses in 1351. The licenses are counted, assessed, and compared; educational histories of individual rectors are traced. By linking Cum ex eo licenses with subsequent episcopal grants, individuals could extend their time at university into a decade or more, but few did. Indeed, despite the opportunity for extended absenteeism provided by Cum ex eo, the average overall length of recorded study was a little over three years.

The final chapter goes beyond the preceding discussion and number-crunching to address “Seven Further Questions,” deepening the analysis by seeking to penetrate behind the licenses to address their wider implications and practical import. Here, Logan briefly but succinctly addresses the financing of nonresidence, location, and content of studies (with most recipients attending Oxford, even if their licenses did not say so); the contemporary developments at Oxford; and the question of whether these rectors returned to their rectories after completing their studies. (He suggests that those who studied for less than four years almost certainly did, and those with seven years of study probably did.) His response to the final question—of whether the pattern recorded at Lincoln was typical—is to make comparisons with the record of licenses issued in the Lichfield and Worcester Dioceses, respectively in 1299–1321 and 1328–37, offered in the hope of stimulating further investigation there and elsewhere.

Despite its brevity, this book offers valuable additional information and analysis to illuminate the educational and intellectual engagement of the parish clergy of fourteenth-century England. It also hints at how much more remains to be excavated from those English episcopal registers that have not yet attracted intense scholarly attention. [End Page 393]

R. N. Swanson
University of Birmingham
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