"Quid dant artes nisi luctum?": Learning, Ambition, and Careers in the Medieval University

Abstract

My title is taken from a poem, Tanto viro locuturi, by the renowned satirist, Walter of Chatillon, who flourished in the latter part of the twelfth century (his dates are circa 1135-1203),' that is, just at the time when the first universities were being formed at Paris, at Bologna, and at Oxford. Quid dant artes nisi luctum et laborem? reads the complete line: What do the arts give other than trouble and toil? Walter's poem is the bitter lament of a poor scholar unable to find a job and questioning the value of his years of hard study, expense, and self-denial. It is a lament, of course, that echoes through the ages, that we hear no less frequently in our own universities than the contemporaries of Walter of Chatillon seem to have heard it when the institution was first coming into being. Nowhere, perhaps, is it truer than in the tradition-bound institution of the university that ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. There is one obvious difference between the lament of Walter's poor scholar and our own. His is addressed to the pope. We know the power and the purse strings controlling our careers lie elsewhere than Rome. There are, to return to the lament itself, two different ways of interpreting the poor scholar's question. Both of them are relevant to the subject of this paper. First of all, Walter of Chatillon is raising the general