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The Bloody Founding of Cambridge
How rowdy students created one of the world’s most renowned universities
If you asked someone to produce a list of universities considered most prestigious, Oxford and Cambridge would almost certainly be mentioned. Too many, these universities are interchangeable. Both incredibly prestigious, both English, both founded in the Middle Ages, and both have been the intellectual breeding ground for various innovative thinkers and figures since their foundings.
It would be no surprise that a longstanding rivalry occurs between the two, which in modern times culminates in the annual “Boat Race”, between the two universities. However, the rivalry today is much more temperate than the violent history that the two institutions originated from.
The Development of Medieval Universities
Before diving into the incident that spawned the schism between these two universities, it is important to understand how universities functioned during the Middle Ages. Before the development of universities, higher education in Christian Europe during the Middle Ages was achieved in grand monasteries and cathedrals. These schools aptly called cathedral schools and monastic schools devoted themselves to understanding the world through a Christian lens and sought to…
