The religious orders were religious or they were nothing. Each
new rule for the reformation of those orders aimed at restoring the
primitive idea of self-immolation at the altar--a severer ritual,
harder living, longer praying. Nay! the new rules, in not a few
instances, were actually aimed against learning and culture. The
Merton Rule was a bringer in of new things. Merton would not call his
society of scholars a _convent_, as the old monkish corporations
had been designated. That sounded too much as though the mere
promotion of pietism was his aim; he revived the old classical word
_collegium_. There had been _collegia_ at Rome before the imperial
times; though some of them had been religious bodies, some were
decidedly not so. They were societies which held property, pursued
certain avocations, and acted in a corporate capacity for very mundane
objects. Why should not there be a _collegium_ of scholars? Why
should students and men of learning be expected to be holier than other
people? When Merton started his college at Oxford, he made it plain by
his statutes that he did not intend to found a society after the old
conventual type, but to enter upon a new departure.
The scholars of the new college were to take no vows; they were not
to be worried with everlasting ritual observances. Special chaplains,
who were presumably not expected to be scholars and students, were
appointed for the ministration of the ceremonial in the church.
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