wrote two strongly worded letters to the Chancellor, Proctors, and Regent Masters of the University, ordering them, ‘under pain of our heavy displeasure,’ to observe the statute of 1314[255]. In 1421, in consideration of remonstrances from the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the University gave a solemn undertaking to carry out the same statute, with some changes in detail[256]. So long however as the condition, that the candidate must have ruled in Arts, was inserted in the ‘form of licensing to incept in theology[257],’ the religious felt themselves to be at a disadvantage in comparison with the seculars, and bitterly resented their inferiority. When therefore, in 1447, the University was raising funds for the erection of the new schools, the Mendicants seized the opportunity to secure the abolition of this clause, promising in return that each friar should pay 40_s._ to the University at the time of receiving the licence[258]. This may however have been only a temporary arrangement: the Registers of Congregation supply little evidence as to its having been carried out[259].
The object of these statutes was partly to prevent the regulars from having an undue advantage over the seculars in the matter of theological degrees, but they must have had the effect of ensuring to the friars some preliminary training before the commencement of their theological studies. Roger Bacon, as usual, has a decided opinion on the necessity of such a training. Writing in 1271[260], he says:--
‘During the last forty years there have arisen some in the Universities (_in studio_) who have made themselves doctors and masters of theology and philosophy, though they have never learnt anything of real value (_dignum_) and are neither willing nor able to do so on account of their ‘_status_.’... They are boys inexperienced in themselves, in the world, in the learned languages, Greek and Hebrew; ... they are ignorant of all parts and sciences of mundane philosophy, when they venture on the study of theology, which demands all human wisdom.... They are the boys of the two student Orders, like Albert and Thomas and others, who enter the Orders when they are twenty years old or less.... Many thousands enter who cannot read the Psalter or Donatus, and immediately after making their profession, they are set to study theology.... And so it was right that they should make no progress, especially when they did not procure instruction for themselves in philosophy from others after they entered the Order. And most of all because they have presumed in the Orders to investigate philosophy by themselves without a teacher--so that they have become masters in theology and philosophy before they were disciples--therefore infinite error reigns among them.’