The University of Paris and the

Stationarii in theThirteenth

and Fourteenth Centuries
 

PEARL KIBRE
 

I
 

'N^ O PARIS, "goal of all men of learning," there came in
the Middle Ages scholars from the four corners of
Europe. There by the 13th century the itinerant scholars
had organized themselves into a corporate association known as
the "university of masters and scholars of Paris." Having as their
chief aim the acquiring as well as the imparting of knowledge,
these masters early recognized the need for some means to ensure
an adequate supply of accurate copies of the scholarly works with
which they were concerned. For although oral teaching was em¬
phasized, the importance of each student having in his hands a
copy of the text lectured upon was not ignored. On the contrary
the statutes of the faculty of canon law in 1340 went so far as to
state specifically that no one A\ould be permitted to attain the de¬
gree of bachelor unless he regularly brought his books with him.
Similarly the faculty of theology in 1366 required each student to
bring his own copy of the text to lectures on the Sentences of
Peter Lombard. The borrowing of books in the Middle Ages was
generally frowned upon.

The method by which the University of Paris solved the pro¬
blem of the production and circulation of scholarly texts through
the control of the stationarii is an interesting one. Although to
some extent already described by such French scholars as Jean
Destrez and Paul Delalain as well as by others, the university's
activities in this regard may well merit our furtlier attention as we
honor the bicentennial of another great university, Columbia,
some seven hundred years later.