ABSTRACT
Though there were separate degrees in Canon and Civil law, there was yet a close connexion between the two, so that (as Mr Mullinger shews) when Occam attacked one he aimed a blow at the other. They were connected also in the university course, i.e. a candidate for the doctor’s degree was not allowed to enter on Canon law until he had heard lectures in Civil for
three years1. It is interesting to observe from the information gathered in Mr J. B. Mullinger’s early History of Cambridge (1873), how the study of law was from the first little encouraged in the universities; and, as respect for learning and culture increased, the law of the period met with disinterested discouragement. And, on the other hand, when Pope John XXII. had ordered the Constitutions and Decretals to be read in the schools at Cambridge in 1317, that study had tended to exterminate others of greater estimation2. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the statutes of several halls and colleges permitted a limited number of inmates to study Canon law with special permission, and a still smaller number to read Civil law.
