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WILLIAM STUBBS
Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history
and kindred subjects
page 166
ι6ο MASTER DAVID. [VII.
satirist, afterwards Archdeacon of Oxford, was another Parisian student ; so was Giraldus Cambrensis ; so probably were Roger of Hoveden and most of those ecclesiastics of the time to whom the title maghter is given in formal documents, of whom it would be useless labour to give a catalogue. The scholars of Tours were of the same class. Bologna was the special university for young archdeacons ; and, as most archdeacons were appointed when very young and by family interest, there was a tolerably rapid succession of them, and I fear it must be added that they fell into a great many temptations. We all know of the question discussed at this period, ' An possit archidiaconus salvus esse ; ' whatever were the peculiar temptations of his official career, he was lucky if he passed without debt or difficulty through his university course. In 1200 Henry de Jacea, Archdeacon of Liege, and not only archdeacon but bishop-elect, was killed in a scuffle with the townsmen of Paris. At Bologna debt seems to have been the greater snare. Gilbert Foliot, when Bishop of London, had sometimes two archdeacons at once studying there ; and at the same time there was resident there a Canon of S. Paul's, Master David, whose letters have been recently published in the Spicilegium Liberianum. David was an Englishman who had studied at Clermont and at Paris, and had gone on to Bologna in the idea of qualifying himself for an archdeaconry, of which the bishop had perhaps given him a half promise. At Bologna he had got into debt, and set up as tutor to the young archdeacons ; he then went on to Rome, where, by the use of the names of his great patrons, he nearly succeeded in getting a recommendation for the Deanery of S. Paul's. Very ungrateful conduct this was, for the deanery was one of the best things that could be got in London, and Master Ralph de Diceto, who was to be the next dean, was actually being made to allow Mr. David an exhibition of ten pounds a year from his
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