High Middle Ages · Europe · Culture

1179

Teaching chairs formalized at Oxford

1179

Oxford masters began giving public lectures on theology, arts, and canon law in the town's scattered schools. The masters organized a loose guild modeled on the one at Paris, which had done the same. The earliest of the English universities was coming into recognizable form. The presence of a concentration of scholars attracted students from across England and Ireland, creating a critical mass of intellectual activity that would soon rival Paris itself.