English University Life in the Middle Ages (review)

English University Life in the Middle Ages. By Alan Cobban. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999. xi, 264 pp. $45.00. ISBN 0-8142-0826-6.

Author of several previous articles and books on medieval universities, Alan Cobban now focuses on the common, everyday life of Oxford and Cambridge during the medieval period. Rather than being a single historical narrative, his book is more of a cross-section description of English universities. It comprises seven thematic chapters describing various aspects of English university life, including the undergraduate and postgraduate experiences, commoners, the academic periphery, teaching and learning, urban relations and recreations, and university administration.

Cobban supports his discussion of each aspect of English university life with careful analysis of primary sources such as letters, ledgers, and college statutes. These materials reveal fascinating facts. For instance, according to Oxford's All Souls College's Statutes (the written list of rules and guidelines adhered to by the college), All Souls employed book-bearers (141). As Cobban explains, a book-bearer was "a servant who was hired to transport the fellows' books to and from the lecture halls" (141). Book-bearers are also found at Cambridge's King's Hall and Oxford's New College. The fact that such a job existed testifies both to the necessity of those books for teaching and learning and their sheer weight. Cobban's primary sources also inform us that books were apparently quite valuable, so valuable, in fact, that they could be used as collateral for hostel and hall lease renewals or deposited against loans in Oxford and Cambridge colleges' loan chests (87). In turn, these loan chests were often endowed by prominent patrons who couldn't quite afford to endow an entire college (132-34). Benefactors could expect various benefits from their patronage, including having their names read off in college benedictions (122). Cobban's analysis of these primary materials offers us fascinating glimpses of English university life.

In addition to giving us such interesting facts, Cobban places them within the larger context of English university life. For instance, his mention of patrons endowing loan chests is included as part of a larger discussion about patrons and their sometimes uneasy relations with the colleges and universities, as well as the larger impact of colleges' endowments on the overall structure of universities (132-36). Cobban also contrasts English universities with ones on the Continent, especially those in southern Europe. One key difference he discusses is that English students tended to be younger and less sophisticated than their southern European counterparts (19). This in turn significantly altered their expectations of university life. In southern Europe, Cobban explains, "the students tended to see their universities as agencies whose services and staff were open to hire like any other business and which were to be used in the best interest of their paying customers," whereas northern European and English students were "content to be the academic equivalent of craft apprentices" (49-50). These differences in student outlook resulted in large differences within and between their respective universities. English students were far less likely to make militant demands upon their universities than were their Italian counterparts.

Although Cobban's book is a thematic rather than strictly linear history of English universities, he does discuss various changes that occurred within them over time. One is the emergence of the colleges as the sites of learning rather than the university as a whole. Partly because of their endowments, colleges, which began as mere halls in Oxford and hostels in Cambridge, gained power and influence throughout the medieval period (125). Not only did college tutorials gain ground against the formerly central university lectures, but, as Cobban notes, "the pattern was set for the English universities to become transformed into decentralized bodies based upon the collegiate unit" (180). Cobban also discusses the growing power of Oxford and Cambridge in urban affairs, partly because of royal patronage and partly because of several ultimately unsuccessful uprisings among the townspeople...