Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/324

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Canonists and Civilians.
[XIII.

scientific material, on which he is employed. In a great number of cases the degrees were taken at the same time, but as the era of the Reformation approaches the canonists become more numerous than the civilians at Cambridge, and probably at Oxford also. But these points belong to a view of the subject on which I cannot pretend to enter now; and indeed it is in the conflict of laws rather than the conflict of studies that the present interest of the subject lies. In the next lecture I shall have to recur for some points to the ground which I have attempted to cover in this, for the struggles and jealousies of the rival and allied systems of jurisprudence do not date from the Reformation only. Here, however, I stop now, having in a cursory way traced the history of the materials of the canonical jurisprudence so far down. We shall have to begin by looking at the later history from the theological as well as from the legal side, and to follow it through the Reformation period, steering clear, as much as possible, of questions of modern controversy.