Foreign Study in a Time of War: English Scholars at Paris, 1325-1345

Abstract

Abstract It is well known that the presence of English students at Paris declined or was eclipsed with the outbreak of war between France and England in 1337. Paris had been a favoured place of study for English scholars since the twelfth century. And despite the growing separation between England and France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the French-speaking culture of the English elite and the prestige of the schools of northern France, especially Paris, continued to draw English students to Paris from John of Salisbury, through Adam of Balsham (Parvipontanus) and Stephen Langton, to Robert Kilwardby, Roger Bacon, John Pecham, and John Duns Scotus. The magnetic force of Paris was so great in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that it has been credited with slowing the development of Oxford and Cambridge as comparable universities until the fourteenth century.