Parergon

Among historians of the medieval university, Bill Courtenay stands supreme, certainly among scholars working in English. In a field of study that is dominated by historians of individual fields of intellectual endeavour, Courtenay has always demonstrated a sure grasp of the institutional framework of learning. In this book, he signals a shift, already evident to those who keep up with his prolific output in journal articles and book chapters, by moving more clearly than ever to the twin (and related) fields of social and religious history. His argument that historians of the University of Paris have tended to overlook the religious framework and devotional structures that shaped the lives of both teachers and students is important. In large part, this neglect may be due to a scholarly focus on the efforts of episcopal and papal authority to intervene in the University rather than the social rituals of that institution. Courtenay brings together in seven chapters, given as lectures, the fruit of meticulous research into different ways in which religion intersected with university life.

Rituals for the Dead is not quite as accurate a summary of the book’s theme as its subtitle, Religion and Community in the Medieval University of Paris. Its title singles out one time-consuming, but largely neglected aspect of university life: the requirement imposed on teachers and students to pray collectively for the dead. Courtenay outlines how each of the four nations in which students in arts were grouped had its own church in rather the same way as a confraternity. In terms of social life, whether secular or religious, these churches created their own parishes with their own rituals, including those of burial and remembrance of the dead. This leads Courtenay into a fascinating chapter on the theological problem created by the apparent injustice that the wealthy could afford a much faster journey to Paradise by the masses that they could commission for their relatives. The dominant (although not universal) view was that a pious action done through charity would indirectly help others without wealthy supporters.

Courtenay also devotes attention to the requirement on masters of each nation to celebrate the five Marian feasts of the Virgin, as well as the feasts of St Nicholas and St Catherine as the patronal saint of each nation. His focus is on the Virgin, remembered not just in these feasts, clearly as a unifying force given the ferocity of antagonism between the nations, but in the imagery of the Great Seal of the University of Paris. Courtenay’s close attention to the seals of university masters in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (on which he has published elsewhere) leads him to document his research into the Great Seal of the University of Paris, which he argues was first created by 1220, but was cancelled by the papacy in April 1221, reasserted in 1222, but then the matrix was smashed by Cardinal Frangipani in 1225 and not restored until 1246, when Pope Innocent IV allowed the seal to be used for a seven-year period, extended in 1252 for another ten years. While Courtenay mentions this chequered history of the Great Seal, he does [End Page 199] not dwell on its evident political significance. Rather he focuses on institutional Marian devotion as emblematic of religious cohesion to which all the masters were expected to adhere. Courtenay’s observation that the Great Seal (the design of which he plausibly suggested might go back to that in use by 1220) has no iconographic precedent, is of interest. It combines an image of the crowned Virgin and Child, with a bishop (St Nicholas) and St Catherine on either side, above images of two regent masters lecturing from books, and of students reading and debating with each other. While Courtenay is strong on the association between...