User:Mcourson

This is information about Robert of Courcon (Courson), who is listed in the Fifth Crusade.

The teaching masters at the University of Paris organized themselves into an association between 1180 and 1210, later called universitas magistorum et discipulorum, and both kings and popes graned it protective privileges. In 1200, Philip II Augustus bestowed a charter of privileges granting exemptions and immunity from civil and criminal jurisdiction to the students and masters, subject only to their own elected officials and the bishop of Paris. The popes also offered assistance to the new corporation.

In the beginning, Paris church officials opposed the formation of this independent society, which claimed legal status and its own seal. The papacy, however, sided with the university. Rules regulatilng its operation, called "statutes," were granted in 1215 by Robert of Courcon (Courson) papal legate, and these delt specifically with curriculum and textbooks.

(cited in Directory of the Middle Ages, #9, pp. 408-410)

Robert of Courcon (Courson) (1160-1219) theologian and cardinal, was born in England. He studied under Peter the Chanter and while teaching theology in Paris, acted as papal judge delegate in a number of important cases. Innocent III raised him to the cardinalate in 1212 and appointed hilm legate to France the following year. Recalled to Rome at the start of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, he remained at the curia until 1218, when he joined the Fifth Crusade as official preacher. He died in Egypt during the siege of Damietta.

Robert was the author of an important Summa, known by its incipit "Tota Celestis Philosophia," that is moral and practical in emphasis. A zealous reformer, as legate he promulgated the landmark decrees for the masters and students of Paris that prescribed the curriculum and recognized the corporate structure of the nascent University of Paris (August 1215).

(The Paris statutes can be found in English in Lynn Thorndike, "University Records and Life" in the Middle Ages (1944, repr 1971) 27-30. See also M. Dickson and C. Dickson, "Le Cardinal Robert de Courson, sa vie," in Archives d'histoire doctrinale et literaire du moyen age, 9 (1934) the standard work; and B.I. Kennedy, "The Contents of Courson's Summa," in Mediaevil Studies, 9, (1947).}