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An Academic Sketch
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tention shows with how vigorous a life the body politic was endowed. But the one great standing competition was that of the ecclesiastical element with the lay. It is traceable alike in the broader and in the minor channels[1].

It does not follow from what has been said that, in any normal or healthy state of things, the University and the Church are adversaries: or even are antagonists in any other sense than as two rowers, one on the right, and the other on the left, portions of whose force neutralise one another, unite nevertheless to propel the boat.

This dualism, this competition of the lay and the ecclesiastical forces, is visible by the side of their cooperation, all along the stream of history. Was it the first presage of this relation between University and Church, when Saint Francis exhibited his apprehension of the great academic power, then in its mere infancy, by his indisposition to see the members of his order incorporated in Universities? And, if so, was it a curious retribution following upon that reluctance, when the strong stream of fact so peremptorily overruled the will of the Founder, that, during the thirteenth

  1. In 1312 Pope Clement V gave his sanction to the original University of Dublin on the petition of the Archbishop. But this harmony did not exclude jealousy; for in the first Statutes it was provided that the Chancellor should receive institution from the Diocesan, and, invested as he was with the spiritual jurisdiction, should also take an oath of obedience. This University was at work in 1320; but it appears soon to have fallen into decay, extinction, and oblivion. See Denifle, pp.639–42.