Teaching Came before University Status
The emergence of the University of St Andrews cannot be compressed into a sudden opening on one day in 1413. After Whitsun in 1410, a group of teachers was already lecturing on theology, canon law, philosophy, and logic in the Scottish town of St Andrews. Laurence of Lindores expounded the Sentences, Richard Cornel and others taught canon law, and other teachers handled philosophy. Initially, the group was closer to an association of teachers who taught separately while maintaining connections with one another.
Bishop Henry Wardlaw provided protection. Scottish students studying abroad faced travel costs as well as the effects of relations with England and the Great Schism. Scotland then supported Benedict XIII of the Avignon line, so establishing higher education at home had practical significance. Some teachers brought back educational experience from the University of Paris, but the new school did not begin with a complete set of buildings or a permanent teaching endowment.
What the Charters Established
Wardlaw granted the teachers and students a charter on February 28, 1412. Under the old Scottish reckoning, the date was written as 1411, which is why modern accounts often give it as 1411–1412. Following episcopal recognition, King James I, the bishop, and other churchmen petitioned Benedict XIII for broader university privileges.
On August 28, 1413, Benedict issued six bulls at Peñíscola, permitting the university to teach theology, canon law, civil law, medicine, arts, and other fields, and authorizing examinations and the conferral of degrees. Henry Ogilvie brought the documents back; they reached St Andrews in February 1414 and were publicly read amid celebrations. Approval, the documents’ arrival, and earlier teaching were different stages. Authorization to teach subjects likewise cannot be taken as direct proof that every faculty was already fully organized.
How the Faculty of Arts Organized Itself
Early organization involved cooperation among the chancellor, a position held by the bishop, the rector of the whole university, and faculty officers. Lindores served as university rector and also exercised a lasting influence on the Faculty of Arts. The faculty had its own dean, financial officer, and other officeholders, and the boundaries between its responsibilities and resources and those of the university as a whole had to be worked out through specific matters.
A meeting on December 8, 1414, resolved to create a faculty record book and seals for the dean and financial officer. Candidates seeking admission to degree examinations required approval from the dean and their teacher, with disputes referred to the faculty. The following year, a meeting required outgoing financial officers to submit their accounts. Such decisions show that university status alone was insufficient: records, authentication, fees, and collective judgments were needed to connect individual teachers’ classrooms into a durable institution.
Study, Disputation, and Requirements for Degrees
Teaching rested on Latin, exposition of prescribed texts, and disputation. A meeting in 1415 required courses to follow Parisian practice and specified that only lectures on Aristotle’s texts would count toward the prescribed study. In 1419, with the chancellor and rector participating, the faculty established a list of books required for the teaching license, showing a gradual shift from individual teachers’ decisions toward shared curricular requirements.
Degrees did not depend merely on classroom attendance. The recorded examiners’ oath of 1419 stipulated that candidates under twenty could not enter the relevant examination without a faculty dispensation. They had to complete the customary works of Aristotle and meet requirements of learning and conduct. The oath for new masters in 1417 also required continued teaching, observance of rules governing dress and order, and defense of faculty institutions. Qualification was connected with subsequent teaching responsibilities, rather than the modern notion of graduating simply by completing courses.
The Practical Limits of Money, Books, and Housing
Early teachers depended mainly on ecclesiastical benefices. The faculty could neither provide accommodation generally nor pay uniform salaries. Degree fees and exemptions for poor students were consequently part of everyday administration. Regulations of 1416 required students to live in teaching houses managed by masters, with exceptions for poor students and sons of local residents, and forbade teachers from soliciting another master’s students. Recruitment and accommodation thus involved income, discipline, and the rights and responsibilities of teachers and students.
In January 1416, the faculty allocated five pounds to buy texts of Aristotle and commentaries on logic and natural philosophy from Paris. In May, however, it first diverted the money to making a mace, agreeing to use later income for the books. The resolution cannot be described as proof that the books had already arrived. Robert of Montrose donated a house on South Street and annual rents in 1419, and Wardlaw provided adjoining property in 1430, creating conditions for centralized teaching and residence. Even these property donations did not immediately solve all the faculty’s financial problems.
A Community That Was Not Always Harmonious
The university’s intellectual and religious environments remained intertwined. In August 1418, the Faculty of Arts decided to withdraw its obedience from Benedict XIII in favor of Martin V and sent representatives to take part in national deliberations. That October, the faculty also declared that the university as a whole could not dispose of the faculty’s own funds without its consent. Recognition of ecclesiastical authority, the pursuit of external legitimacy, and defense of internal financial rights proceeded alongside one another.
There were also disagreements over philosophy teaching. The records of 1418 favored Buridan’s doctrines and excluded those of Albert’s school; debate resumed after Lindores’s death. On November 14, 1438, following the chancellor’s intervention, the faculty permitted teachers to teach Albert’s doctrines or other teachings free of logical and philosophical error. This was not academic freedom without limits, but it shows that the institution developed through continuing negotiation of rules. The early history of St Andrews therefore involved charters and patronage alongside shortages of resources and adjustments to members’ rights.