By the beginning of the thirteenth century both students and teachers had
become so numerous, at a number of places in western Europe, that they
began to adopt the favorite mediaeval practice and organized themselves
into associations, or guilds, for further protection from extortion and
oppression and for greater freedom from regulation by the Church. They now
sought and obtained additional privileges for themselves, and, in
particular, the great mediaeval document--a charter of rights and
privileges. [4] As both teachers and students were for long regarded as
_clerici_ the charters were usually sought from the Pope, but in some
cases they were obtained from the king. [5] These associations of
scholars, or teachers, or both, "born of the need of companionship which
men who cultivate their intelligence feel," sought to perform the same
functions for those who studied and taught that the merchant and craft
guilds were performing for their members. The ruling idea was association
for protection, and to secure freedom for discussion and study; the
obtaining of corporate rights and responsibilities; and the organization
of a system of apprenticeship, based on study and developing through
journeyman into mastership, [6] as attested by an examination and the
license to teach. In the rise of these teacher and student guilds [7] we
have the beginnings of the universities of western Europe, and their
organization into chartered teaching groups (R. 100) was simply another
phase of that great movement toward the association of like-minded men for
worldly purposes which began to sweep over the rising cities in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries. [8]

The term _universitas_, or _university_, which came in time to be applied
to these associations of masters and apprentices in study, was a general
Roman legal term, practically equivalent to our modern word _corporation_.
At first it was applied to any association, and when used with reference