ABSTRACT
We have seen in the preceding lectures how the University and then the arts faculty were first organised; and we have seen how this organisation evolved from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Since there was no sharp divide between the time when the arts faculty was teaching in the schools of the rue du Fouarre and the time when it had been absorbed into the colleges, since this transformation took place gradually so that it is impossible to tell when it began and when it became an established fact, we have deemed it necessary to describe here the whole course of this evolution in its totality. But all we have gained so far is an understanding of the organ of academic life; now we must pass on from the organ and examine its function. We know what the structure of education was at different periods of the Middle Ages; we must now examine what this education consisted in throughout this same period of our history. There is a division within our subject here which we have already encountered and which we will encounter at every stage of our investigation. An academic system is defined by its academic institutions, by the way they are organised; and also by the nature of the subjects which are taught there and the way in which they are taught. We have tried to reconstruct the form of the mediaeval schools; we can now get inside them in order to see what is happening in them.
