The emergence of universities in the thirteenth century had a significant impact on the study of the Bible. Preparatory changes had already taken place in the twelfth century at cathedral schools, such as Laon, Chartres and Paris, and at houses of newly founded canonical orders, such as St Victor in Paris. Yet the principal setting for biblical study in the early Middle Ages, namely monasteries, remained an important context, particularly those of the Cistercian order. What was new in the thirteenth century was the emergence of a different institutional setting, universities, some of which possessed a faculty of theology with a corporation of masters responsible for teaching that included biblical instruction. The university structure brought together independent secular clerics who were teaching theology, such as Peter the Cantor, Peter of Poitiers, Simon of Tournai and Stephen Langton, into one corporate body, soon to be joined by members of a new type of religious order, the mendicant friars. These new orders, such as the Franciscans and Dominicans, and later the Augustinian Hermits and Carmelites, ostensibly supported their mission of preaching and care of souls through begging (thus the term mendicant); they saw universities, particularly Paris, as an ideal location for training their most talented members in theology and biblical studies. For the first time the study of the Bible no longer simply served the liturgical, homiletical and spiritual needs of individuals and communities; it became an academic discipline.

Throughout the thirteenth century faculties of theology were limited to certain universities, principally Paris, Oxford and Cambridge, with Paris the most important of that group. Eventually degree-granting theological faculties were created at Toulouse, Bologna, Prague, Vienna, Cologne, Louvain and elsewhere, but the faculty of theology at Paris continued to dominate throughout the late Middle Ages. Equally important, however, were the schools (studia) of the mendicant orders, which paralleled university programmes and were partially integrated with them. Secular clerics and mendicant friars shared a common goal for biblical study: preparation for preaching, even as the content of the Bible provided material for the study of doctrine, speculative theology and ethical teaching. And the speculative aspect of theological study, in turn, had a shaping effect on the study of the Bible.

Accounts of the intellectual and educational development of northern France in the central and late Middle Ages rarely give much attention to ties with or scholars from the Iberian Peninsula. The Carolingian renaissance of the late eighth and ninth centuries is usually described as fueled by scholars from Italy, such as Peter of Pisa or Paul the Deacon, or from England and Ireland, such as Alcuin or John Scotus Eriugena. Contributions from a number of émigrés from Spain are less discussed. Theodulf of Orléans, Agobard of Lyons or Claudius of Turin are identified by their episcopal appointments but little attention is paid to their Iberian origins. Nor is the impact of Iberian learning highlighted in scholarship on Western Europe. Accounts of the twelfth-century renaissance generally acknowledge how Gerbert of Aurillac's studies at Barcelona in the late tenth century shaped his subsequent teaching at Reims; or how Adelard of Bath's travels in Spain enriched his knowledge of natural philosophy; and how the importance of Toledo as a center of translation facilitated the transmission of philosophical texts to northern Europe. Yet the leading figures in the standard narrative of northern European culture in the twelfth century are St Anselm, Hugh of St Victor, Peter Abelard, John of Salisbury, Bernard of Clairvaux and other Italian, German, English or French figures.

After the acknowledgement of the contributions of Petrus Hispanus to the study of grammar in the twelfth century or the contributions in logic by another Petrus Hispanus in the thirteenth century, Iberian culture ceases to be part of the major narrative of intellectual history.

William of Ockham has long been considered one of the foremost figures in the history of medieval philosophy and theology. As such his thought is often contrasted with that of the other seminal thinkers of High Scholasticism: Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, Giles of Rome, and John Duns Scotus, as if those were the appropriate and sufficient voices of debate within which Ockham's thought was developed. The completion of the critical edition of Ockham's philosophical and theological writings has, on one level, confirmed that picture and revealed Scotus as the single most important figure on Ockham's intellectual horizon. The editors, however, along with scholars working on lesser-known figures in the early fourteenth century, have at the same time uncovered a more complex picture of intellectual exchange in which Ockham's immediate contemporaries - those active between 1305 and 1325 - exercised a profound impact on his thought, and he on theirs.

Other contributions of recent scholarship that change or at least refine the way Ockham is viewed today are a more extensive knowledge of the lives of those with whom he interacted, the educational system of the Franciscan order that determined the physical settings in which Ockham was active, and the structure and intellectual activity at universities and other studia in England and on the Continent. These allow a fresh examination – a more nuanced picture – of Ockham’s intellectual heritage and the influence his thought had on subsequent generations.

Earlier generations of historians often described medieval universities as avenues of social opportunity where the sons of townspeople and those from rural villages could receive a higher education and, with it, the possibility of upward mobility through church and court. The case of Robert of Sorbon provides a successful example, a person of rural and humble background who rose through the university and royal service to a position of wealth and power. Presumably, those from the middle level of medieval society took advantage of universities, which the truly poor could not afford without a patron, and which those of wealth and nobility did not need.

In recent decades, however, as more prosopographical work has been done on medieval universities, the appearance within university communities of sons of noble and powerful families has been increasingly observed. The “aristocratization” of medieval universities, as this phenomenon is sometimes labeled, is thought to have been a element that entered university life in the late fourteenth century and did not become a major factor until the fifteenth century. The computus of 1329–30 provides a chance to test the extent to which wealth and social power were already factors in university life, at least at Paris, in the early fourteenth century.

RICH AND POOR

To address that issue, we must first determine how representative a cross section of the university is contained in the computus. As discussed in Chapter One, the computus numerically accounts for about two-thirds of the secular university community at Paris in 1329–30.

The computus of 1329–30 employs, as we have seen, two different systems for recording payments. One system was a street-by-street, house-by-house survey that noted the names of masters or scholars living alone or with other scholars whom they represented for purposes of financial assessment. The other system was a straight listing of names, usually with payment, without regard for residential location. These two systems coincide, for the most part, with the two quires as reconstructed. To make sense of that division as well as to understand the nature of the collection, those responsible for initiating it, the authority under which it was conducted, the composition of the committee that surveyed the university community and collected the payments, the timeframe for the collection, and what finally happened to the money, it is necessary to understand the procedures governing this event as they were developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Contrary to what has sometimes been stated, there is no evidence that the university of Paris as a corporate institution assessed its members annually to cover regular anticipated expenses. The cost of instruction was paid for in private collectae between a master and his students. The costs of rents and repairs of the schools were paid for by the masters and the nations from student fees. The expenses of the nations and of the faculties, including the payment of its officers and beadles as well as convivialities, were covered largely by funds derived from examinations and promotions