# Academic History: How well would a modern person do at a medieval university? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 12, 2012, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808 "2012-11-12T19:41:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2022, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/42 "2022-05-06T19:10:09Z")
There are still classical mods at Oxford, though Wikipedia says that > it evolved in the 21st century from 11 or 12 three-hour papers across seven consecutive days into 10 or 11 three-hour papers across seven or eight days. and that there are now options for promising students who have not learned Latin or Greek at A-level, namely taking beginners’ Latin or Greek. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2022, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/43 "2022-05-06T21:47:08Z")
The OP’s last post was five years ago, so maybe he found that time machine. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2022, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/44 "2022-05-06T23:10:14Z")
I would demonstrate how to solve cubic and quartic equations and really blow their minds. This requires complex numbers, BTW. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2022, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/45 "2022-05-06T23:45:59Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I would demonstrate how to solve cubic and quartic equations and really blow their minds. This requires complex numbers, BTW. I would introduce the world to the advanced technology of belt loops. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2022, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/46 "2022-05-06T23:53:38Z")
If you really wanted to dazzle the academics at Medieval Oxford, just bring along some ballpoint pens. They’d be totally agog. But I don’t see the point of trying to attend the classes there. I’d be bored stiff with the theology, which was the main course of study. At some later time they added law and medicine. I’d also be bored with the former and outraged with the latter. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/47 "2022-05-07T00:45:01Z")
> [@velomont](#): > > > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > > > Paragraph breaks? A lot of early text didn’t even take breaks between words. > > > > Textjustranonlikethisandyouhadtofigureoutwhattheindividualwordswere > > I was actually going to mention this, though I no longer recall when, and over what period, our typical spacing and punctuation would have evolved. Writing that way would not have been particularly difficult (once you got the actual script sorted out) but reading someone else’s writing would have been a huge challenge. Yep. Better get good at reading [Carolingian minuscule](https://hmmlschool.org/assets/img/school/LatinCarolineHero.jpg) because that’s what your texts will be written in. Notice, though, that the text in that image is in fact punctuated. Punctuation in European writings actually goes back to the 5th century BCE. Classical Greek playwrights used it to indicate pauses. Punctuation first appeared in England in the 10th c. CE, but didn’t become common until the Norman Conquest. Medieval scribes, especially monastic ones, expected the texts to be read aloud, and punctuation served for them the same purpose it had for Aristophanes and Euripides: to tell the reader when to breathe. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/48 "2022-05-07T04:18:48Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > Better get good at reading [Carolingian minuscule](https://hmmlschool.org/assets/img/school/LatinCarolineHero.jpg) because that’s what your texts will be written in. Not much of a problem. Carolingian minuscule is a pretty easy font to read. Admittedly, I can’t read the text you linked to. But that’s because it’s Latin. [Here’s a sample of English text written in Carolingian minuscule.](https://external-preview.redd.it/y-7-pzPtJabW_HlKdu6ZHe7I005a0poA8UqTyJjf1eg.jpg?auto=webp&s=777e906cfad23fda0c2f64ea3e6c93f06645d950) Now Fraktur I would have problems with. It’s all those vertical strokes. But nobody in medieval times used Fraktur. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/49 "2022-05-07T04:23:19Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Admittedly, I can’t read the text you linked to. But that’s because it’s Latin. [Here’s a sample of English text written in Carolingian minuscule.](https://external-preview.redd.it/y-7-pzPtJabW_HlKdu6ZHe7I005a0poA8UqTyJjf1eg.jpg?auto=webp&s=777e906cfad23fda0c2f64ea3e6c93f06645d950) Pshaw. Let me know when you can read it in the original Westron. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/50 "2022-05-07T10:30:25Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > If you really wanted to dazzle the academics at Medieval Oxford, just bring along some ballpoint pens. They’d be totally agog. You can’t write decent medieval scripts with ballpoint pens. Now, calligraphic fountain pens, on the other hand… ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/51 "2022-05-07T10:43:19Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > You can’t write decent medieval scripts with ballpoint pens. So they’ll change the way the write to something ballpoint pens are good at. Assuming they have a sufficient supply of them, which unless you brought back a huge amount, they won’t have. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/52 "2022-05-07T11:18:53Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > So they’ll change the way the write to something ballpoint pens are good at. That’s not how institutions have ever worked. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/53 "2022-05-07T11:52:51Z")
Ballpoint pens are made with printing ink (at least that is one story about Biro), so, with all that tech, setting up a small press would be more valuable to the university (though people are already going back and forth through a time vortex and buying 4th-millennium textbooks, right?) Although available in a wide assortment of colours and therefore potentially interesting for something like illuminated manuscripts, from many perspectives ballpoint pens are not that exciting compared to a simple quill. (The exception is portability, but that does not matter when sitting at a desk.) A well-engineered metal nib, on the other hand, is fantastic, because you do not have to waste all that time cutting quills. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/54 "2022-05-07T12:17:00Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Out of [grammar, logic, rhetoric, music, astronomy, arithmetic, and geometry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivium_(education)), the only one I can think of that might be changed for the harder in medieval times is music, because their system of music could be so different and all musical classification is pretty arbitrary when you get down to it. That’s also definitely true, to a far greater degree, of astronomy, arithmetic, and geometry. Likely also logic. I don’t know enough of the history of grammar and rhetoric to say, there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were so. The frontiers of mathematics are far more difficult nowadays than they were then, but they’re different frontiers. The stuff they were teaching in universities then, we teach to elementary-school students, because we’ve since learned how to teach them much better. Except you won’t be using the elementary school methods; you’ll be expected to use the God-awful medieval methods. In other words, you’d already know most of the material, but there’s no way you’d be able to pass a medieval test on it. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/55 "2022-05-07T17:08:06Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > > [@dtilque](#): > > > > So they’ll change the way the write to something ballpoint pens are good at. > > That’s not how institutions have ever worked. Who’s talking about institutions? I’m talking about people who actually did the writing. Using a quill is slow and cumbersome. They knew that, but didn’t have anything better. Give them something lots better and they’ll drop the quills in a heartbeat. And while a metal nib is better than a quill, it’s not that much better. There’s a reason the vast majority of people do not use quills or nibs any more. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/56 "2022-05-07T17:21:13Z")
I was in Pakistan during the 1970s and our Catholic school didn’t allow ball point pens until 1982. I bet the scholar monks of the twelfth century had more in common with the Brothers running our school than the second half of the 20th century in the United States. Our tennis club did not allow newfangled metal or fiberglass “racquets” for about ten years after all professionals were using them. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/57 "2022-05-07T20:18:43Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > I’m talking about people who actually did the writing. You mean, the people in the institution? Because medieval scribes were very much part of a larger institution that dictated their methods. > [@dtilque](#): > > Give them something lots better But it _isn’t_ better for the writing they were doing, is my point. It’s not like they didn’t have non-quill tools for jotting down quick words - wax tablets and silverpoint pens and chalk were all available in this period. But none of those would do for manuscript work. > [@dtilque](#): > > There’s a reason the vast majority of people do not use quills or nibs any more. The vast majority of people don’t use ballpoints, either. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/58 "2022-05-07T20:37:17Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > > [@dtilque](#): > > > > Give them something lots better > > But it _isn’t_ better for the writing they were doing, is my point. If they aren’t better, then why did ballpoints replace fountain pens for pretty much all uses as soon as they were invented? Yes, some schools held out using fountain pens for quite a while (the first pen I was taught to use in a Catholic grade school was a fountain pen) but they were teaching an archaic technology. > [@MrDibble](#): > > > [@dtilque](#): > > > > There’s a reason the vast majority of people do not use quills or nibs any more. > > The vast majority of people don’t use ballpoints, either. Only because a new tech (computers) is displacing them. It’s not because they’re going back to fountain pens or quills. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/59 "2022-05-07T20:58:36Z")
It’s not just the pens. You also need factories to mass-produce them, and a trucking industry to transport them from the factories to the users. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/60 "2022-05-07T21:04:22Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > If they aren’t better, then why did ballpoints replace fountain pens for pretty much all uses as soon as they were invented? By this time, the scripts used were completely different. > [@dtilque](#): > > Only because a new tech (computers) is displacing them. And because the _outputs_ of that new tech are desirable. The outputs of ballpoint pens would not be desirable for medieval scribes. The equivalent of medieval manuscripts weren’t the handwritten notes a ballpoint pen is used for. They are _printed_ pages. Moveable type is what replaced the scribes. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808/61 "2022-05-08T05:20:14Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > I was thinking this would be the chief risk, especially for a person not especially religious in the first place (not referring to the OP specifically). And it wasn’t enough back then to be devout - it was necessary to be righteous _in the approved sense_ . I missed this thread first time around. Fascinating. I think you would have to go the Mass all the proper times, but righteous? You’d be a college student, and back then they were even less righteous than us. There were frequent student - townspeople riots at Oxford, if I remember the history when I visited the university. I’m not sure about English universities, but in Germany a student paid a professor per lecture, not the university for a package deal. So, bring money. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/academic-history-how-well-would-a-modern-person-do-at-a-medieval-university/640808.md?page=2)