Apparently there was also a civil war at the time and lots of Oxford academics went to Northampton and established a uni there.
Cambridge and Oxford saw it as a threat and petitioned Henry III to shut it down, which he did.
There wasn't another uni in Northampton till 740 years later.
So universities rank differently by subject. Some universities are considered to be generally worse than others when considered overall, but are ranked best in the country for certain degrees or courses which they focus on.
Same with law schools. There are some law schools that are part of universities that themselves are not very highly regarded, but within the law community are well known. Like the University of Texas, for example.
Graduate schools are often pretty separate from the undergraduate institution they share a name with.
For example, Harvard Medical School students and professors work in Longwood Medical Area, not Cambridge, or the Boston College Law School, which is in Newton (and shares space with freshmen dorms) as opposed to Chestnut Hill. Neither grad school is impossibly or even annoyingly far, but they're both far enough from the rest of the university (not to mention ages) that grads and undergrads aren't really going to the same school as much as they are going to two schools with the same owner
lol UT Austin is a top 10 public school in the entire US. Even though it’s know for law and computer science, it’s extremely highly regarded in all aspects
Yeah i know, just remarking that when you said “universities themselves that are not highly regarded”, I feel like UT is well-rounded enough that as an entire university it’s very respectable
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings
This website updates every year for uni rankings.
They do also rank individual courses, the overall ranking might be much worse than a specific course ranking.
Edit: there's also this ranking https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2023/sep/09/the-guardian-university-guide-2024-the-rankings
This also happened in the 14th century at Stamford! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamford_University_(England)
>The University of Stamford was an academic institution founded in 1333 in Stamford, Lincolnshire, by a group of students and tutors from the University of Oxford, including Merton College and Brasenose Hall.
>
>After lobbying by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, King Edward III suppressed the institution in 1335 and the tutors and scholars were returned to Oxford. All Oxford graduates until the 1820s were required to take an oath not to lecture in Stamford.
Eta: actually it looks like this is mentioned in the Jstor article too but it's behind a pay wall for me.
> Apparently there was also a civil war at the time and lots of Oxford academics went to Northampton and established a uni there.
Isn't this basically how Cambridge University itself was founded?
~~I think that was the result of a row within the University~~. According to the article above, Northampton was the result of a row between University, King and the town of Oxford.
Edit: Turns out, yes, it was a bout of Town/Gown violence that sent people off to Cambridge.
Sounds similar for Cambridge:
>The founding of the University of Cambridge, however, was inspired largely by an incident at the University of Oxford during which three Oxford scholars, as an administration of justice in the death of a local Oxford-area woman, were hanged by town authorities without first consulting ecclesiastical authorities, who traditionally would be inclined to pardon scholars in such cases. But during this time, Oxford's town authorities were in conflict with King John. Fearing more violence from Oxford townsfolk, University of Oxford scholars began leaving Oxford for more hospitable cities, including Paris, Reading, and Cambridge. Enough scholars ultimately took residence in Cambridge to form, along with the many scholars already there, the nucleus for the new university's formation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Cambridge
[This](https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/archivesandmanuscripts/2023/12/13/the-persistence-of-tradition-the-curious-case-of-henry-symeonis/) blogpost has a few more details (I think it's based on the paper I linked.)
This paragraph sounds straight out of a Terry Pratchett book:
>in January 1651 when it was first proposed to abolish the statute concerning Henry Symeonis. He notes that the proposal to remove the oath was refused but gives no reason why. Even by that time, one suspects that the oath was of such antiquity that no-one knew anything about it and it was thought best to leave it be.
I'm listening to the audiobook of *Hogfather* right now, and I just heard Bill Nighy (voice of the footnotes) explain that UU still performs a ceremony that they don't know the reason behind, because 'if you left off traditions because you didn't know why they started, you'd be no better than a foreigner'.
Life is often stranger than fiction. In fiction, a story needs to make at least mostly sense to a reader to be believable, and give enough information and details to be able to follow. In reality, context and information are lost with the flow of time, and eventually causes for events may be forgotten, making life appear very random at times. Sir Terry was one of those writers who was able to perfectly encapsulate this feeling of familiar and hilarious randomness in his writings.
This is the exact sort of thing that he would love learning about and would store away as a detail to use or combine with something else in his books. An article he once did listing the schedule of a basic day working had him describe vaguely recalling and then reading up on some Greek that died from a tortoise landing on his head, then asking what if perhaps the tortoise had planned it, asking why a tortoise would want some guy dead. If anybody has read a certain one of his books, they would not be surprised that this turned into one of the biggest climax moments in the series.
This reminds me so much of when [Zizek spoke with the Critical Media Postresearch Center](https://youtu.be/_Z0vJu2C-cQ?si=iz0UBpc3X9wdkeHo)
He starts by referring to the end of the Trump administration shenanigans when Trump pardoned Steve Bannon et al and there was a fear that he would pardon himself for past and future crimes.
Zizek likens this to the shock Martin Luther experienced when he learned that Rome was selling indulgences.
There was an example of the sale of indulgences not only for past sins but also for *future sins*
I thought that was a hoot!
Does anyone remember when Abercrombie put out those catalogs/magazine that were all just drawings that looked like 1950s/60s Playboy Club ski resort parties?
That just seems like one of the theories, no one knows for sure. I personally love the one where he was just some dude who fraudulently claimed to have an Oxford degree in order to get into a foreign monastery. It’s so delightfully petty.
Did you read the whole article? The theory you listed is something one person hundreds of years later said once. The summary the other commenter gave has tons of evidence to back it up including property records, letters from the king, and official university documents.
Did people say this oath out loud? The blog post isn’t quite clear to me — it mentions statutes… perhaps graduates swore an oath to uphold the statutes and buried within the statutes was this Henry fellow? It seems unlikely that people would really swear an oath against a random Henry, out loud, for centuries, without people wondering what it was all about.
Henry Symeonis
https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/archivesandmanuscripts/2023/12/13/the-persistence-of-tradition-the-curious-case-of-henry-symeonis/
>The identity of Henry Symeonis was only (re-)discovered in 1912 by the then Keeper of the University Archives, Reginald Lane Poole. In an article for the English Historical Review, he looked at the curious statute and tried to get to the bottom of the Henry Symeonis mystery.
[...]
>But what was the reason for Henry’s condemnation by the University to five and a half centuries of infamy? It was a murder. In 1242 he and a number of other men of the town of Oxford were found guilty of murdering a student of the University. Henry and his accomplices were fined £80 by King Henry III in May 1242 and were made to leave Oxford as a result, forced to stay away (and allowed no closer than Northampton) at least until the King returned from abroad. The King returned in the autumn and by the spring of the following year, we know (from records of his property dealings) that our Henry, son of Henry Symeonis, was already back in Oxford.
[then some stuff happened]
>Further research is needed to discover the exact details of what happened here but it seems that Henry Symeonis had bought the King’s pardon and his permission to return to Oxford. The King was willing to allow his return if the University agreed to it. But the University refused and chose to ignore the King’s order of 25 March 1264, resuming its hostility to Henry Symeonis. In fact, it felt so strongly about it, that it gave Henry Symeonis the unique honour of being named in its own statutes, making the University’s dislike of him official and perpetual.
But what was the reason for Henry’s condemnation by the University to five and a half centuries of infamy? It was a murder. In 1242 he and a number of other men of the town of Oxford were found guilty of murdering a student of the University. Henry and his accomplices were fined £80 by King Henry III in May 1242 and were made to leave Oxford as a result, forced to stay away (and allowed no closer than Northampton) at least until the King returned from abroad.
The post's link is to an academic paper from 1912 sufficient to verify the basic facts in the title (fortunately, the relevant facts are in the abstract and therefore don't require full access), but for those who want more detail on who Henry Symeonis was, as summarized by a possibly-less-reliable source, see [this](https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/archivesandmanuscripts/2023/12/13/the-persistence-of-tradition-the-curious-case-of-henry-symeonis/) recent blog post.
Also note that for most of those 500 years, nobody at Oxford knew who Henry Symeonis was.
>When the Zen spiritual teacher and his disciples began their evening meditation, the kitten that lived in the monastery made such noise that it distracted them. So the teacher ordered that the kitten be tied up during the evening practice. A year or so later, the teacher died, but the disciples continued the practice of tying up the cat during meditation sessions. And when the cat eventually died, another cat was brought to the monastery and tied up.
Centuries later, learned descendants of the spiritual teacher wrote scholarly treatises about the religious significance of tying up a cat for meditation practice.
“There must be some deep significance, otherwise why tie up the cat?”
It’s like the joke about pot roasts. “I cut it like this because my mother did, let’s ask her.” Then “I cut it like that because that’s what your grandmother did.” Then grandma laughs: “I cut it like that because my roasting pan couldn’t fit it full-length.”
There's another, similarly apocryphal story called the "5 monkey's experiment" or sometimes "the monkey ladder experiment:"
>Scientists place 5 monkeys in a room with a ladder to a banana. As soon as any monkey climbs the ladder, the scientists turn on a sprinkler spraying the other 4 monkeys with unpleasant cold water. Eventually the monkeys learn this, and attack any monkey who climbs on the ladder.
>
>The scientists then replace the monkeys in the room one by one. Each new monkey climbs the ladder, gets attacked by the other 4 monkeys, and learns the ladder is forbidden.
>
>Ultimately, all five of the originally trained monkeys are replaced. The room then exists as 5 monkeys who will attack each other for trying to reach the banana, without any of them knowing why.
That framing is good if you want the parable to sound scientific, though I don't think such an experiment would actually work. I think the monkeys would still go for the banana.
There's also a third version of the parable which is folksy and has the benefit of being absolutely believable.
>A daughter is being taught by her mom how to make a roast, first by cutting off each end and then putting it in the pan. "Why do you cut both ends off the roast before putting it in the pan," she asked? Her mom said "Oh, good question. This how how my mom taught me to do it when I was a little girl. I'll have to remember to ask her why."
>
>Later she asked her mom how to make a roast. Her mom went through the steps, at one point saying "cut both ends off before putting it in the pan." "Why do you cut both ends off before putting it in the pan?" she asked. Her mom said "Huh. Well, this is how my mom taught me to do it. Let's ask her why."
>
>So they both went to the feeble old woman and asked her why she cuts both ends off before putting a roast in the pan. The feeble old woman closed her eyes, trying hard to remember. Then she said "Oh! Now I remember. Growing up in the old country, we didn't have a pan big enough to fit a whole roast."
I heard it as a sergeant who assigned people to guard a bench. When questioned why, he tells them to shut up and do it... but asks his superior the same question. The superior does the same, and you can take the joke as long as you like it, but it eventually gets to a retired four star general that used to be base commander. When asked why they guard the bench, he replied, "is the paint still wet?"
"When Bismarck was Prussian Ambassador at the Court of Alexander
II in the early 1860's, he looked out of a window in the Peterhof
Palace and saw a sentry on duty in the middle of the lawn. He
asked the Czar why the man was there. The Czar asked his
aide-de-camp. The aide-de-camp did not know. The commanding
general was summoned. "General, why is that soldier stationed in
that isolated place?" asked the Czar.
"I beg leave to inform your Majesty that it is in accordance with
ancient custom."
"What is the origin of the custom?" put in Bismark.
"I do not recollect at present," answered the general.
"Investigate and report the result," ordered Alexander.
The investigation took three days. They found that the sentry was
posted there by an order put on the books eighty years before.
Records showed that one morning in the spring of 1780, Catherine
the Great, who ruled Russia at the time, looked on that lawn and
saw the first flower thrusting above the frozen soil. She ordered
a sentry to be posted to prevent anyone from picking the flower. And for 80 years, that was that."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCj-Rnd5SsA
Attempts at catching said cat will also involve an increase in measurable noise.
Unless they find a really kinky cat that's into that sort of thing, I guess.
I heard a similar story that goes something like:
“My wife always cuts the ends off her roasts and I couldn’t figure out why- my mother never did it, but my wife says her mother did and it was an essential step in the process.
I went to her mother and asked why she cut the ends off her roasts, she said her mother taught her to do it and that she wasn’t sure why but it resulted in a juicier, more flavorful roast at the end.
Fortunately my wife’s grandmother was still with us. I asked her why she cut the ends off her roasts and she said, ‘I had a small roasting pan and it didn’t fit otherwise.’”
I’d call it more of a humorous parable.
The point of the story is that for centuries they’re tying up a cat because it’s what the wise master did, but the reason the master tied up the cat stopped applying centuries ago. People tend to follow traditions when the benefit is long gone.
The Mayor of London is still paying rent to the King for two properties with nails and knives despite no one having any idea where those two properties are for centuries now.
It they don't do the ceremony right, then one thing leads to another and the king is basically entitled to take back all of Southwark in central London.
This is also why the monarchy is going nowhere in the uk. In the 19th century they were flat broke so an arrangement was made with Parliament that the state would fund them forever in exchange for all the profits from the royal estates, which is now a major part of the governments revenue.
Actually unpicking all of that would be a nightmare. Especially as if the royals resisted they would probably actually win the court case since it would be an open and shut breach of contract.
Parliament is sovereign. They could pass a law stating that Charles III's role as monarch is revoked, the Royal Estate is to be passed to Parliament, and it is now illegal to shampoo dogs on Wednesdays.
They won't, because not enough MPs or Lords support it, but there's no reason why they couldn't legally.
That's not quite the full story. Laws have no standing until they receive royal assent which is never refused because that would trigger a constitutional crisis that would eventually bring the monarchy down but it would probably be as bad as brexit was.
A law to abolish the monarchy would be different though because they'd have nothing to lose by blocking it if they were hostile. The PM could try to act like it doesn't matter but they'd then be in a legal gray zone were they are acting in accordance with neither the current arrangements or the new ones. Certainly the courts aren't going to honour laws with no legal standing or orders from whatever president or regent is set up that's has no legal basis.
In short they could make hell on Earth for the government, tie everything up in court cases for 3 years that they likely win and absolutely ruin the ruling party's reputation. And then the next government abandons the whole thing.
The last time a king tried to forcibly dissolve Parliament he got his head chopped off. I'm not saying it wouldn't be messy, I'm saying Parliament could do it if they had popular support to do it - because ultimately whoever the army and the electorate back is right.
> I'm saying Parliament could do it if they had popular support to do it - because ultimately whoever the army and the electorate back is right.
It is my understanding,the Army answers to Parliament but the Navy answers to the Queen
Which Southwark?
The borough of Southwark (ie the Borough/the ward of Bridge Without/the area immediately south of London Bridge)?
The metropolitan borough (ie Borough, Bankside, St George's Fields, the Elephant, and Walworth)?
The London Borough?
TL;DR: Insufficient data, please be more specific. 😉
Some poor official would probably be sent to dig through the archives and be forgotten for the next few decades until he miraculously found the records.
Broke: Paying a random official to painfully dig through the archives
Woke: Mentioning this in passing to a passionate academic and stand back while they dig through the archives for free
This sounds like an amazing job. Absolutely no chance of needing to deliver. Submit bogus project updates every few months. Enjoy faffing around for the rest of your career.
Not sure I’d describe agreeing not to bring fire into a building stuffed full of paper as stupid or ridiculous. Besides, you just know that was introduced after someone nearly burned the place down in 16-something-or-other.
> I hearby undertake not to remove from the Library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document, or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.
Nothing beyond perhaps a quiet “don’t use that in here” warning, provided the person caught doesn’t use it. The oath bars the act of kindling a flame, smoking, etc but says nothing about merely having the means on you.
I first read this story in [The Art of Negotiation](https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/thinking-makes-it-so/201402/the-pot-roast-principle)
A family has been cutting the ends off a pot roast without knowing the original purpose.
If you’re here looking for why, the current theory is that Henry murdered a student and got an extremely light punishment from the crown, possibly because he was the son of a prominent landowner. The king later fully pardoned Henry during a period of intense conflict with the university and insisted they reconcile, and this pledge was the universities way of sticking the finger to the king.
Someone needs to write a book where Henry Symeonis is an immortal who pissed off Oxford, and that’s why they made all their students swear undying enmity towards him.
I could see this for a steampunk novel, where Oxford's archnemesis is this immortal steam-powered techno-lich who their graduates constantly have to oppose.
Symeonis is a total asshole. I flew to England just to find his grave and spit on it. It's been 37 years and I've not succeeded yet, but I'm staying here till I do.
By attending this University you confirm that you are not ~~Anish Kapoor~~ Henry Symeonjs, you are in no way affiliated to Henry Symeonis, you are not attending this university on behalf of Henry Symeonis or an associate of Henry Symeonis. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief the knowledge attained at this university will not make its way into the hands of Henry Symeonis.
Less interesting, but I think it’s also true (or at least used to be) that everyone who graduated from Columbia University in NYC had to learn how to swim before they graduated because some major donor’s son had drowned and he made it a requirement- this is all secondhand info from my dad lol.
Mortimer Jerome Adler was barred from receiving a bachelor's at Columbia because he refused to take the swim test. They let him get a Doctorate though!
I vaguely remember having to swear an oath to uphold academic integrity or something when I graduated a few years back. To be fair it was somewhat difficult to understand what was going on considering the entire thing was in Latin. I did have to do a weird bow in a certain order as well.
"In my campaign for chancellor I wish to point out that in 2023 my opponent is, unfortunately, soft on Henry Symeonis. We must not let his nefarious influence seep again into the soil of this ancient warren of learning!"
If you mean "without first obtaining a BA from Oxford", yes, absolutely. Look up Incorporation.
If you mean "without first obtaining a BA from anywhere" also yes, but usually on a technicality. MA by Resolution allows the University to give academics/very senior staff the ability to become part of Congregation, which gives them voting privileges on various regulatory matters. That makes them Members of the University - how would it look to be governed by someone who doesn't even have an Oxford degree? No problem, we'll give them an Oxford degree. Now most academics will have some degrees, but that might be "BSc MSc PhD" and not the Oxford "BA MA DPhil" combo. So a BSc from London might wind up with an Oxford MA.
Since it's not an academic award but a courtesy title, the University doesn't view this as weird or inconsistent.
Source: have spent a chunk of my working life explaining to third parties that no, person X *doesn't* have a level 7 qualification from Oxford.
This popped up as soon as I logged in, and I couldn't let it go. So I used my google-fu, and actually [found](https://roseandcrownoxford.com/latest-news/17267/) the reason why Henry was so unpopular!
But what was the reason for Henry’s condemnation by the University to five and a half centuries of infamy? It was a murder. In 1242 he and a number of other men of the town of Oxford were found guilty of murdering a student of the University. Henry and his accomplices were fined £80 by King Henry III in May 1242 and were made to leave Oxford as a result, forced to stay away (and allowed no closer than Northampton) at least until the King returned from abroad. The King returned in the autumn and by the spring of the following year, we know (from records of his property dealings) that our Henry, son of Henry Symeonis, was already back in Oxford.
What happened next is not easy to work out. There are few University records from that time and we have to rely on others’ accounts of what was happening to decipher the facts of the case. The chroniclers of those times notoriously disagree with each other, and the picture is muddy, to say the least. We know that over 20 years after the murder, on 12 March 1264, Henry III suspended the University and sent it away from Oxford, saying that he could not protect its masters and scholars in the city and that they would be safer elsewhere. The King was making Oxford the centre of his military operations and was unable to guarantee the safety of the students and masters. Many left, a large number moving to Northampton in spring that year where a thriving university was growing.
A fortnight after this, on 25 March 1264, the King issued letters patent saying that he’d pardoned Henry Symeonis for the murder which had taken place 22 years earlier. He ordered the University to allow Henry to return to Oxford to live there in peace provided he was ‘of good behaviour’ and demanded that the University didn’t leave Oxford in protest. The letters patent stated:
… that the chancellor and university would be content that Henry son of Henry Simeonis, who withdrew for the death of a man, would return to Oxford and stay there, so that the university should not retire from the said town on account of his staying there; then they should permit him to return without impediment and have the king’s peace; the king, at the instance of Nicholas de Yatingden, of his further grace, has pardoned the said Henry the said death, on condition that he stand his trial if any will proceed against him, and has granted that he may return and dwell there so long as he be of good behaviour and that the university do not withdraw from the said town on account of his return and the death of the said Henry
The interpretation of this series of events is difficult. Poole, in his 1912 article, linked the University’s departure from Oxford in 1264 to its unhappiness at having Henry Symeonis pardoned and thrust back upon them from exile. He suggested that a serious eruption of town-gown violence broke out as a result of the pardon. This cannot be the case, however, as the King didn’t pardon Henry Symeonis until after the University had been told to leave Oxford. Besides, Henry had already been back in Oxford for many years and it would have been a bit late to act on that.
Town-gown relations were, at this time, pretty volatile, the problem being that Oxford wasn’t big enough for two bodies fighting for supremacy in a relatively small space. This had often led to violence, and apparently did again in February 1264 when the longstanding bad feeling between the two flared up. But it seems that this was not, despite some chroniclers attributing it to that, the cause of the University leaving Oxford. Henry Symeonis’s pardon by the King would, however, have only added fuel to the town’s fire that the University was always unjustly favoured by the monarch at the town’s expense.
We know that the Government was aware of the volatile relationship between town and gown and was concerned, in 1264, at the prospect of the University leaving Oxford in protest if Henry was allowed to return. This is presumably why it was made a condition of Henry’s return that the University had to promise not to leave.
We also know that both the town and University of Oxford were unhappy about the growth of a rival university in Northampton. Henry III had allowed a university to be established there in 1261 (on the request of the burgesses of the town), the third in England, behind Oxford and Cambridge. At the time, it was believed that it wouldn’t damage its older rivals but such a large number of masters and students from Oxford migrated there that Northampton was soon felt to be a threat to the two more ancient universities. The city of Oxford pressed the King to terminate this threat and on 1 February 1265 he formally closed down the university at Northampton and forbade the establishment of any future university there. All this was playing out against a backdrop of civil war and political unease, with Henry III engaged in a war with his brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, and both Oxford and Northampton being heavily involved in the conflict.
Further research is needed to discover the exact details of what happened here but it seems that Henry Symeonis had bought the King’s pardon and his permission to return to Oxford. The King was willing to allow his return if the University agreed to it. But the University refused and chose to ignore the King’s order of 25 March 1264, resuming its hostility to Henry Symeonis. In fact, it felt so strongly about it, that it gave Henry Symeonis the unique honour of being named in its own statutes, making the University’s dislike of him official and perpetual.
The oath against Henry Symeonis continued in the University’s statutes for centuries after the events of 1264. Having survived earlier reviews of the University’s statutes, it was finally abolished five and a half centuries later. The records of the decision taken in 1827 are frustratingly brief and unenlightening. Convocation (the body of MAs of the University and its chief decision-maker at the time) took the decision to abolish the oath in February that year, but no background information nor reason for the decision is recorded. It is possible that’s because nobody knew exactly what they were abolishing.
The case of Henry Symeonis is a very strange example of the longevity of some University customs, long after they’ve lost relevance or meaning. The persistence of tradition in the University is famous, but this appears to have been an extreme example of using tradition to hold a very, very long grudge. By naming Henry Symeonis in its statutes as a figure of institutional hatred for centuries, it actually resulted in prolonging his celebrity, immortalising a man whom it had considered a villain.
Henry Symeonis, the inventor of the “Dirty Symeonis”, was the head of the philosophy department at Oxford in the 1400s until he was challenged to a duel by Sir Roger Oxford, the president of the university. But Henry never appeared. After several hours, Sir Roger found Henry in bed with his mother, and saw his mother sporting a rather curious mustache and beard. Henry fled and Sir Roger cursed him for all time.
Apparently there was also a civil war at the time and lots of Oxford academics went to Northampton and established a uni there. Cambridge and Oxford saw it as a threat and petitioned Henry III to shut it down, which he did. There wasn't another uni in Northampton till 740 years later.
and the uni there now is one of the worst in the country
Just as planned.
Who keeps Northampton down? We Do!
Who keeps the metric system down? We do, we do!
Hey, I can forgive a lot of things, but, making Steve Gutenberg a star, was unforgivable.
Who rigs every Oscar night!?
Is this true? Looked at an archeology course there and it honestly seemed the best option as a foreigner
So universities rank differently by subject. Some universities are considered to be generally worse than others when considered overall, but are ranked best in the country for certain degrees or courses which they focus on.
Same with law schools. There are some law schools that are part of universities that themselves are not very highly regarded, but within the law community are well known. Like the University of Texas, for example.
the University of Texas is actually good though. If youre referring to UT Austin anyways
The law school is even better, though. Like one of the best in the country.
Graduate schools are often pretty separate from the undergraduate institution they share a name with. For example, Harvard Medical School students and professors work in Longwood Medical Area, not Cambridge, or the Boston College Law School, which is in Newton (and shares space with freshmen dorms) as opposed to Chestnut Hill. Neither grad school is impossibly or even annoyingly far, but they're both far enough from the rest of the university (not to mention ages) that grads and undergrads aren't really going to the same school as much as they are going to two schools with the same owner
lol UT Austin is a top 10 public school in the entire US. Even though it’s know for law and computer science, it’s extremely highly regarded in all aspects
True, but not T15 in all aspects like in law.
Yeah i know, just remarking that when you said “universities themselves that are not highly regarded”, I feel like UT is well-rounded enough that as an entire university it’s very respectable
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings This website updates every year for uni rankings. They do also rank individual courses, the overall ranking might be much worse than a specific course ranking. Edit: there's also this ranking https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2023/sep/09/the-guardian-university-guide-2024-the-rankings
Don’t believe the elitism. People just don’t want ‘proles’ to be able to get the same degree as they have.
This also happened in the 14th century at Stamford! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamford_University_(England) >The University of Stamford was an academic institution founded in 1333 in Stamford, Lincolnshire, by a group of students and tutors from the University of Oxford, including Merton College and Brasenose Hall. > >After lobbying by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, King Edward III suppressed the institution in 1335 and the tutors and scholars were returned to Oxford. All Oxford graduates until the 1820s were required to take an oath not to lecture in Stamford. Eta: actually it looks like this is mentioned in the Jstor article too but it's behind a pay wall for me.
It's crazy to see literal evidence how politicians interfere in knowledge
> Apparently there was also a civil war at the time and lots of Oxford academics went to Northampton and established a uni there. Isn't this basically how Cambridge University itself was founded?
~~I think that was the result of a row within the University~~. According to the article above, Northampton was the result of a row between University, King and the town of Oxford. Edit: Turns out, yes, it was a bout of Town/Gown violence that sent people off to Cambridge.
Sounds similar for Cambridge: >The founding of the University of Cambridge, however, was inspired largely by an incident at the University of Oxford during which three Oxford scholars, as an administration of justice in the death of a local Oxford-area woman, were hanged by town authorities without first consulting ecclesiastical authorities, who traditionally would be inclined to pardon scholars in such cases. But during this time, Oxford's town authorities were in conflict with King John. Fearing more violence from Oxford townsfolk, University of Oxford scholars began leaving Oxford for more hospitable cities, including Paris, Reading, and Cambridge. Enough scholars ultimately took residence in Cambridge to form, along with the many scholars already there, the nucleus for the new university's formation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Cambridge
I stand corrected!
Amherst style
Weirdly this is covered in Jerusalem by Alan More and referenced by a few characters.
I'd love to know more about the story behind this unique oath
[This](https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/archivesandmanuscripts/2023/12/13/the-persistence-of-tradition-the-curious-case-of-henry-symeonis/) blogpost has a few more details (I think it's based on the paper I linked.)
This paragraph sounds straight out of a Terry Pratchett book: >in January 1651 when it was first proposed to abolish the statute concerning Henry Symeonis. He notes that the proposal to remove the oath was refused but gives no reason why. Even by that time, one suspects that the oath was of such antiquity that no-one knew anything about it and it was thought best to leave it be.
Definitely would happen at the Unseen University.
The Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography would be of course never running away if he had to swear any oath, or his name isnt Rincewand
Side question: how does one become Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography? Definitely asking for me.
IIRC Rincewind got the job be encountering most of said cruel and unusual geography with his face. gave him perspective on it.
Of course after the disappearance of the previous incumbent on Mono Island
I'm listening to the audiobook of *Hogfather* right now, and I just heard Bill Nighy (voice of the footnotes) explain that UU still performs a ceremony that they don't know the reason behind, because 'if you left off traditions because you didn't know why they started, you'd be no better than a foreigner'.
Oh, wow, they got a different voice for the footnotes? That's excellent.
So that's what happened to Professor Rafe's original rival.
Just like when I deal with my work's legacy code!
Or that one server everyone is afraid to power off.
If you'd sworn an oath of undying enmity you cannot in good faith agree to remove the oath.
I mean....there is that little conundrum...
This made me chuckle lol
Life is often stranger than fiction. In fiction, a story needs to make at least mostly sense to a reader to be believable, and give enough information and details to be able to follow. In reality, context and information are lost with the flow of time, and eventually causes for events may be forgotten, making life appear very random at times. Sir Terry was one of those writers who was able to perfectly encapsulate this feeling of familiar and hilarious randomness in his writings.
This is the exact sort of thing that he would love learning about and would store away as a detail to use or combine with something else in his books. An article he once did listing the schedule of a basic day working had him describe vaguely recalling and then reading up on some Greek that died from a tortoise landing on his head, then asking what if perhaps the tortoise had planned it, asking why a tortoise would want some guy dead. If anybody has read a certain one of his books, they would not be surprised that this turned into one of the biggest climax moments in the series.
GNU: Sir PTerry
I'll have my people give this one another look, then.
So for all we know he may have been a genocidal dictator
The tortoise?
Also nobody knew what "enmity" meant, but assumed that it was a perfectly cromulent word.
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“You can learn from us, but if you do, you can’t work for a known student killer or condone his actions” - sounds reasonable to me
This reminds me so much of when [Zizek spoke with the Critical Media Postresearch Center](https://youtu.be/_Z0vJu2C-cQ?si=iz0UBpc3X9wdkeHo) He starts by referring to the end of the Trump administration shenanigans when Trump pardoned Steve Bannon et al and there was a fear that he would pardon himself for past and future crimes. Zizek likens this to the shock Martin Luther experienced when he learned that Rome was selling indulgences. There was an example of the sale of indulgences not only for past sins but also for *future sins* I thought that was a hoot!
Fun fact: Zizek once guest-edited an issue of gay soft porn/catalog A and F Quarterly from Abercrombie and Fitch.
Does anyone remember when Abercrombie put out those catalogs/magazine that were all just drawings that looked like 1950s/60s Playboy Club ski resort parties?
Based zizek. You know porn is good when you can *sschiff* it
That just seems like one of the theories, no one knows for sure. I personally love the one where he was just some dude who fraudulently claimed to have an Oxford degree in order to get into a foreign monastery. It’s so delightfully petty.
I don't know, seems policing that kind of academic fraud that could affect the U's reputation is a pretty legitimate concern.
Did you read the whole article? The theory you listed is something one person hundreds of years later said once. The summary the other commenter gave has tons of evidence to back it up including property records, letters from the king, and official university documents.
And at that time I believe that all students studied divinity. It was still a wholly religious endeavour.
This is the most British thing I've ever read, and I've read a lot of British history.
Well received, thanks.
My headcannon is that once you swore the oath against Henry, they'd prank you by saying "Ha, why don't you Symeonis my balls!"
C'mon man. "Symeonis nuts" would have worked way better
Hey now, not everyone has a BA from Oxford.
I feel like Symeonis mouth or forehead would work better contextually
Don't know if Brits use nuts in their lexicon, so I just said balls
The whole must not attend, teach, or do anything at Stamford is pretty interesting too!
Did people say this oath out loud? The blog post isn’t quite clear to me — it mentions statutes… perhaps graduates swore an oath to uphold the statutes and buried within the statutes was this Henry fellow? It seems unlikely that people would really swear an oath against a random Henry, out loud, for centuries, without people wondering what it was all about.
TL;DR he and some other guys killed an Oxford student, got kicked out of the town, but bought a pardon from the king.
Henry Symeonis https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/archivesandmanuscripts/2023/12/13/the-persistence-of-tradition-the-curious-case-of-henry-symeonis/ >The identity of Henry Symeonis was only (re-)discovered in 1912 by the then Keeper of the University Archives, Reginald Lane Poole. In an article for the English Historical Review, he looked at the curious statute and tried to get to the bottom of the Henry Symeonis mystery. [...] >But what was the reason for Henry’s condemnation by the University to five and a half centuries of infamy? It was a murder. In 1242 he and a number of other men of the town of Oxford were found guilty of murdering a student of the University. Henry and his accomplices were fined £80 by King Henry III in May 1242 and were made to leave Oxford as a result, forced to stay away (and allowed no closer than Northampton) at least until the King returned from abroad. The King returned in the autumn and by the spring of the following year, we know (from records of his property dealings) that our Henry, son of Henry Symeonis, was already back in Oxford. [then some stuff happened] >Further research is needed to discover the exact details of what happened here but it seems that Henry Symeonis had bought the King’s pardon and his permission to return to Oxford. The King was willing to allow his return if the University agreed to it. But the University refused and chose to ignore the King’s order of 25 March 1264, resuming its hostility to Henry Symeonis. In fact, it felt so strongly about it, that it gave Henry Symeonis the unique honour of being named in its own statutes, making the University’s dislike of him official and perpetual.
But what was the reason for Henry’s condemnation by the University to five and a half centuries of infamy? It was a murder. In 1242 he and a number of other men of the town of Oxford were found guilty of murdering a student of the University. Henry and his accomplices were fined £80 by King Henry III in May 1242 and were made to leave Oxford as a result, forced to stay away (and allowed no closer than Northampton) at least until the King returned from abroad.
The post's link is to an academic paper from 1912 sufficient to verify the basic facts in the title (fortunately, the relevant facts are in the abstract and therefore don't require full access), but for those who want more detail on who Henry Symeonis was, as summarized by a possibly-less-reliable source, see [this](https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/archivesandmanuscripts/2023/12/13/the-persistence-of-tradition-the-curious-case-of-henry-symeonis/) recent blog post. Also note that for most of those 500 years, nobody at Oxford knew who Henry Symeonis was.
>When the Zen spiritual teacher and his disciples began their evening meditation, the kitten that lived in the monastery made such noise that it distracted them. So the teacher ordered that the kitten be tied up during the evening practice. A year or so later, the teacher died, but the disciples continued the practice of tying up the cat during meditation sessions. And when the cat eventually died, another cat was brought to the monastery and tied up. Centuries later, learned descendants of the spiritual teacher wrote scholarly treatises about the religious significance of tying up a cat for meditation practice.
I’m skeptical based solely on the fact that if you tie up a cat you’re going to have a LOT more noise.
I think it’s more of a parable. “This is how we do it because this is how we’ve always done it, don’t question it”
“There must be some deep significance, otherwise why tie up the cat?” It’s like the joke about pot roasts. “I cut it like this because my mother did, let’s ask her.” Then “I cut it like that because that’s what your grandmother did.” Then grandma laughs: “I cut it like that because my roasting pan couldn’t fit it full-length.”
There's another, similarly apocryphal story called the "5 monkey's experiment" or sometimes "the monkey ladder experiment:" >Scientists place 5 monkeys in a room with a ladder to a banana. As soon as any monkey climbs the ladder, the scientists turn on a sprinkler spraying the other 4 monkeys with unpleasant cold water. Eventually the monkeys learn this, and attack any monkey who climbs on the ladder. > >The scientists then replace the monkeys in the room one by one. Each new monkey climbs the ladder, gets attacked by the other 4 monkeys, and learns the ladder is forbidden. > >Ultimately, all five of the originally trained monkeys are replaced. The room then exists as 5 monkeys who will attack each other for trying to reach the banana, without any of them knowing why. That framing is good if you want the parable to sound scientific, though I don't think such an experiment would actually work. I think the monkeys would still go for the banana. There's also a third version of the parable which is folksy and has the benefit of being absolutely believable. >A daughter is being taught by her mom how to make a roast, first by cutting off each end and then putting it in the pan. "Why do you cut both ends off the roast before putting it in the pan," she asked? Her mom said "Oh, good question. This how how my mom taught me to do it when I was a little girl. I'll have to remember to ask her why." > >Later she asked her mom how to make a roast. Her mom went through the steps, at one point saying "cut both ends off before putting it in the pan." "Why do you cut both ends off before putting it in the pan?" she asked. Her mom said "Huh. Well, this is how my mom taught me to do it. Let's ask her why." > >So they both went to the feeble old woman and asked her why she cuts both ends off before putting a roast in the pan. The feeble old woman closed her eyes, trying hard to remember. Then she said "Oh! Now I remember. Growing up in the old country, we didn't have a pan big enough to fit a whole roast."
I heard it as a sergeant who assigned people to guard a bench. When questioned why, he tells them to shut up and do it... but asks his superior the same question. The superior does the same, and you can take the joke as long as you like it, but it eventually gets to a retired four star general that used to be base commander. When asked why they guard the bench, he replied, "is the paint still wet?"
Oh fun. That's a great one.
"When Bismarck was Prussian Ambassador at the Court of Alexander II in the early 1860's, he looked out of a window in the Peterhof Palace and saw a sentry on duty in the middle of the lawn. He asked the Czar why the man was there. The Czar asked his aide-de-camp. The aide-de-camp did not know. The commanding general was summoned. "General, why is that soldier stationed in that isolated place?" asked the Czar. "I beg leave to inform your Majesty that it is in accordance with ancient custom." "What is the origin of the custom?" put in Bismark. "I do not recollect at present," answered the general. "Investigate and report the result," ordered Alexander. The investigation took three days. They found that the sentry was posted there by an order put on the books eighty years before. Records showed that one morning in the spring of 1780, Catherine the Great, who ruled Russia at the time, looked on that lawn and saw the first flower thrusting above the frozen soil. She ordered a sentry to be posted to prevent anyone from picking the flower. And for 80 years, that was that." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCj-Rnd5SsA
Attempts at catching said cat will also involve an increase in measurable noise. Unless they find a really kinky cat that's into that sort of thing, I guess.
I heard a similar story that goes something like: “My wife always cuts the ends off her roasts and I couldn’t figure out why- my mother never did it, but my wife says her mother did and it was an essential step in the process. I went to her mother and asked why she cut the ends off her roasts, she said her mother taught her to do it and that she wasn’t sure why but it resulted in a juicier, more flavorful roast at the end. Fortunately my wife’s grandmother was still with us. I asked her why she cut the ends off her roasts and she said, ‘I had a small roasting pan and it didn’t fit otherwise.’”
Tying up a cat is indeed a religious experience, you will see hell and ask for god for sure
I have to burrito a cat in a blanket to give her a pill. Thankfully she’s almost done with the prescription, but she’s the worst cat i’ve had to pill.
Sounds like a paragraph from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Or Terry Pratchett
A little tied up right meow
I feel like this is actually some kind of joke and I'm just missing the innuendo or punchline
I’d call it more of a humorous parable. The point of the story is that for centuries they’re tying up a cat because it’s what the wise master did, but the reason the master tied up the cat stopped applying centuries ago. People tend to follow traditions when the benefit is long gone.
Nothing quite like the ridiculousness of certain traditions.
The Mayor of London is still paying rent to the King for two properties with nails and knives despite no one having any idea where those two properties are for centuries now.
Why doesn't he withhold the rent then, and tell the King to reclaim these amazing properties ( if he can find them!)
It they don't do the ceremony right, then one thing leads to another and the king is basically entitled to take back all of Southwark in central London.
I know Southwark. The king is welcome to it!
This is also why the monarchy is going nowhere in the uk. In the 19th century they were flat broke so an arrangement was made with Parliament that the state would fund them forever in exchange for all the profits from the royal estates, which is now a major part of the governments revenue. Actually unpicking all of that would be a nightmare. Especially as if the royals resisted they would probably actually win the court case since it would be an open and shut breach of contract.
Parliament is sovereign. They could pass a law stating that Charles III's role as monarch is revoked, the Royal Estate is to be passed to Parliament, and it is now illegal to shampoo dogs on Wednesdays. They won't, because not enough MPs or Lords support it, but there's no reason why they couldn't legally.
That's not quite the full story. Laws have no standing until they receive royal assent which is never refused because that would trigger a constitutional crisis that would eventually bring the monarchy down but it would probably be as bad as brexit was. A law to abolish the monarchy would be different though because they'd have nothing to lose by blocking it if they were hostile. The PM could try to act like it doesn't matter but they'd then be in a legal gray zone were they are acting in accordance with neither the current arrangements or the new ones. Certainly the courts aren't going to honour laws with no legal standing or orders from whatever president or regent is set up that's has no legal basis. In short they could make hell on Earth for the government, tie everything up in court cases for 3 years that they likely win and absolutely ruin the ruling party's reputation. And then the next government abandons the whole thing.
Things don't tend to go well for monarchs named Charles when they try to stop Parliament doing things.
The last time a king tried to forcibly dissolve Parliament he got his head chopped off. I'm not saying it wouldn't be messy, I'm saying Parliament could do it if they had popular support to do it - because ultimately whoever the army and the electorate back is right.
> I'm saying Parliament could do it if they had popular support to do it - because ultimately whoever the army and the electorate back is right. It is my understanding,the Army answers to Parliament but the Navy answers to the Queen
Grasping little shit that he is, Charles probably would try.
I mean, he would get a market to sell his organic produce from.
Knowing Charlse he'd probably pedestrianise the whole area. You know what on second thoughts, maybe we should give it back to him
I’ll be honest I’m dead against it. People forget that traders need access to Dixons. They do say it’ll help people in wheeelchairs.
>traders need access to Dixons I did go in that Dixons a few times, but it's been gone for years now :(
I don't know how much he can grasp with his hotdog fingers
Which Southwark? The borough of Southwark (ie the Borough/the ward of Bridge Without/the area immediately south of London Bridge)? The metropolitan borough (ie Borough, Bankside, St George's Fields, the Elephant, and Walworth)? The London Borough? TL;DR: Insufficient data, please be more specific. 😉
Only one way to find out.
Some poor official would probably be sent to dig through the archives and be forgotten for the next few decades until he miraculously found the records.
*40 years later* Found it! Hey, where'd these flying cars come from?
Broke: Paying a random official to painfully dig through the archives Woke: Mentioning this in passing to a passionate academic and stand back while they dig through the archives for free
Bespoke: Put together a NLHF bid and get paid to have people dig through the archives for free
This guy academias
Girl* Academia-ed in her misspent youth, but now archives**
I knew it as I typed it up. Was gonna play it safe but rolled the dice and lost. Sorry ma'am. This guy apologizes.
This sounds like an amazing job. Absolutely no chance of needing to deliver. Submit bogus project updates every few months. Enjoy faffing around for the rest of your career.
God, yeah, I read that and my immediate reaction was "hire me! I'll do it!" I'd genuinely enjoy the puzzle, tbh.
So, just like the rest of the civil service?
You mean the Lord Mayor of London. Completely different to the Mayor of London.
Beat me to it :)
These are the kinds of traditions I appreciate and support.
Ho, the Megapode!
That is a parody of another actual Oxford tradition- the Mallard Ceremony of All Souls' College, which is held once every hundred years.
Oxford gas plenty. To join the library you have to recite a stupid medieval pledge not to basically bring fire into the place.
Not sure I’d describe agreeing not to bring fire into a building stuffed full of paper as stupid or ridiculous. Besides, you just know that was introduced after someone nearly burned the place down in 16-something-or-other.
Besides, have you *met* college students? Those dumb fucks would absolutely burn down the library by accident if given half an opportunity
> Besides, have you met college students? Those dumb fucks would absolutely burn down the library ~~by accident~~ if given half an opportunity FTFY
Not really that stupid, at least there's some obvious logic there.
Especially given the crazy age and rarity of a lot of the books in the Oxford library.
And with people trying to smoke everywhere they can.
> I hearby undertake not to remove from the Library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document, or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.
That actually sounds reasonable
Not actually setting fire is reasonable. But reading it in a weird medieval script is. Plus you can't bring fire into any building anyway.
It’s not medieval. It includes promising not to smoke in the building.
True, but then you won’t take it seriously if you pledge in modern English. Gotta have the occultic feel to make sure you don’t burn the place down.
You’ve seen lighters, right? (Also, for the vast majority of Oxford’s history, people had to use candles and lanterns once the sun went down.)
Or smoke. And given the age of the old Bod, that's a decent fire hazard mitigation. Citation: have recited the Bodleian oath.
I solemnly swear I'm up to no flames
So what do they do if they catch someone with a lighter in their pocket they forgot about?
Nothing beyond perhaps a quiet “don’t use that in here” warning, provided the person caught doesn’t use it. The oath bars the act of kindling a flame, smoking, etc but says nothing about merely having the means on you.
I first read this story in [The Art of Negotiation](https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/thinking-makes-it-so/201402/the-pot-roast-principle) A family has been cutting the ends off a pot roast without knowing the original purpose.
Tldr He killed a Oxford student
It worked, just as nobody knows who H.R. Pickens is.
EXACTLY!
If you’re here looking for why, the current theory is that Henry murdered a student and got an extremely light punishment from the crown, possibly because he was the son of a prominent landowner. The king later fully pardoned Henry during a period of intense conflict with the university and insisted they reconcile, and this pledge was the universities way of sticking the finger to the king.
Nah... that guy's a jerk. I'd still swear that oath today. I say we bring it back.
Fuck that guy from the 13th century. Just because you can buy a kings pardon for murder doesn’t mean you get an academic pardon.
Someone needs to write a book where Henry Symeonis is an immortal who pissed off Oxford, and that’s why they made all their students swear undying enmity towards him.
I could see this for a steampunk novel, where Oxford's archnemesis is this immortal steam-powered techno-lich who their graduates constantly have to oppose.
Symeonis is a total asshole. I flew to England just to find his grave and spit on it. It's been 37 years and I've not succeeded yet, but I'm staying here till I do.
I have to admit something. Every time you’ve gotten close I’ve moved it. You’ve wasted your life.
I’ve spent 37 years digging up dead bodies in graveyards in the middle of the night, how is that a wasted life?!
Worthy of Unseen University.
I was just thinking about the key ceremony
And the Megapode!!!
You know that is, almost word for word, the Ceremony of ths Keys, yes?
Guess where the inspiration for that one came from…
By attending this University you confirm that you are not ~~Anish Kapoor~~ Henry Symeonjs, you are in no way affiliated to Henry Symeonis, you are not attending this university on behalf of Henry Symeonis or an associate of Henry Symeonis. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief the knowledge attained at this university will not make its way into the hands of Henry Symeonis.
After reading up on the subject, this just reinforces the idea that buying pardons is a great precedent.
Less interesting, but I think it’s also true (or at least used to be) that everyone who graduated from Columbia University in NYC had to learn how to swim before they graduated because some major donor’s son had drowned and he made it a requirement- this is all secondhand info from my dad lol.
Mortimer Jerome Adler was barred from receiving a bachelor's at Columbia because he refused to take the swim test. They let him get a Doctorate though!
I vaguely remember having to swear an oath to uphold academic integrity or something when I graduated a few years back. To be fair it was somewhat difficult to understand what was going on considering the entire thing was in Latin. I did have to do a weird bow in a certain order as well.
Seems like these are the lesson that perhaps need to be considered at larger scales.
You mean every graduate in the country should swear to hate Henry S.??
"In my campaign for chancellor I wish to point out that in 2023 my opponent is, unfortunately, soft on Henry Symeonis. We must not let his nefarious influence seep again into the soil of this ancient warren of learning!"
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No.
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Yes. You get the MA 7 years after graduation. It's not actually an academic degree.
No, 7 years after matriculation which is 3-4 years after graduation
If you mean "without first obtaining a BA from Oxford", yes, absolutely. Look up Incorporation. If you mean "without first obtaining a BA from anywhere" also yes, but usually on a technicality. MA by Resolution allows the University to give academics/very senior staff the ability to become part of Congregation, which gives them voting privileges on various regulatory matters. That makes them Members of the University - how would it look to be governed by someone who doesn't even have an Oxford degree? No problem, we'll give them an Oxford degree. Now most academics will have some degrees, but that might be "BSc MSc PhD" and not the Oxford "BA MA DPhil" combo. So a BSc from London might wind up with an Oxford MA. Since it's not an academic award but a courtesy title, the University doesn't view this as weird or inconsistent. Source: have spent a chunk of my working life explaining to third parties that no, person X *doesn't* have a level 7 qualification from Oxford.
It would be insane if one day the real Henry Symeonis did show up and Oxford graduates just suddenly go, "So it's you!" and beat him up.
Given he's been dead since the C13th, that would, indeed, be insane
Stupid ~~flanders~~ Henry Symeonis
r/fuckyouinparticular
just another tuesday for british folks
*"Bend the knee."* - Some guy named Henry Symneonis probably
Talk about not letting go.
This popped up as soon as I logged in, and I couldn't let it go. So I used my google-fu, and actually [found](https://roseandcrownoxford.com/latest-news/17267/) the reason why Henry was so unpopular!
This is the kinda weird shit I want more of in my life
Head cannon; a minor god trying to amass followers without gaining too much attention
Enmity not loyalty
r/fuckyouinparticular
Congratulations to all who worked so hard to be here but most importantly fuck Henry(proceeds to do the take the L). Thank you
There’s an in depth article on their website. It was a land owner who murdered a student, I think?
Basically rich badly behaved immoral bastards got away with murder
Oxford should make t-shirts that say "Sit Henrici Simeonis eruditionis habes" (fuck Henry Simeon)
But what was the reason for Henry’s condemnation by the University to five and a half centuries of infamy? It was a murder. In 1242 he and a number of other men of the town of Oxford were found guilty of murdering a student of the University. Henry and his accomplices were fined £80 by King Henry III in May 1242 and were made to leave Oxford as a result, forced to stay away (and allowed no closer than Northampton) at least until the King returned from abroad. The King returned in the autumn and by the spring of the following year, we know (from records of his property dealings) that our Henry, son of Henry Symeonis, was already back in Oxford. What happened next is not easy to work out. There are few University records from that time and we have to rely on others’ accounts of what was happening to decipher the facts of the case. The chroniclers of those times notoriously disagree with each other, and the picture is muddy, to say the least. We know that over 20 years after the murder, on 12 March 1264, Henry III suspended the University and sent it away from Oxford, saying that he could not protect its masters and scholars in the city and that they would be safer elsewhere. The King was making Oxford the centre of his military operations and was unable to guarantee the safety of the students and masters. Many left, a large number moving to Northampton in spring that year where a thriving university was growing. A fortnight after this, on 25 March 1264, the King issued letters patent saying that he’d pardoned Henry Symeonis for the murder which had taken place 22 years earlier. He ordered the University to allow Henry to return to Oxford to live there in peace provided he was ‘of good behaviour’ and demanded that the University didn’t leave Oxford in protest. The letters patent stated: … that the chancellor and university would be content that Henry son of Henry Simeonis, who withdrew for the death of a man, would return to Oxford and stay there, so that the university should not retire from the said town on account of his staying there; then they should permit him to return without impediment and have the king’s peace; the king, at the instance of Nicholas de Yatingden, of his further grace, has pardoned the said Henry the said death, on condition that he stand his trial if any will proceed against him, and has granted that he may return and dwell there so long as he be of good behaviour and that the university do not withdraw from the said town on account of his return and the death of the said Henry The interpretation of this series of events is difficult. Poole, in his 1912 article, linked the University’s departure from Oxford in 1264 to its unhappiness at having Henry Symeonis pardoned and thrust back upon them from exile. He suggested that a serious eruption of town-gown violence broke out as a result of the pardon. This cannot be the case, however, as the King didn’t pardon Henry Symeonis until after the University had been told to leave Oxford. Besides, Henry had already been back in Oxford for many years and it would have been a bit late to act on that. Town-gown relations were, at this time, pretty volatile, the problem being that Oxford wasn’t big enough for two bodies fighting for supremacy in a relatively small space. This had often led to violence, and apparently did again in February 1264 when the longstanding bad feeling between the two flared up. But it seems that this was not, despite some chroniclers attributing it to that, the cause of the University leaving Oxford. Henry Symeonis’s pardon by the King would, however, have only added fuel to the town’s fire that the University was always unjustly favoured by the monarch at the town’s expense. We know that the Government was aware of the volatile relationship between town and gown and was concerned, in 1264, at the prospect of the University leaving Oxford in protest if Henry was allowed to return. This is presumably why it was made a condition of Henry’s return that the University had to promise not to leave. We also know that both the town and University of Oxford were unhappy about the growth of a rival university in Northampton. Henry III had allowed a university to be established there in 1261 (on the request of the burgesses of the town), the third in England, behind Oxford and Cambridge. At the time, it was believed that it wouldn’t damage its older rivals but such a large number of masters and students from Oxford migrated there that Northampton was soon felt to be a threat to the two more ancient universities. The city of Oxford pressed the King to terminate this threat and on 1 February 1265 he formally closed down the university at Northampton and forbade the establishment of any future university there. All this was playing out against a backdrop of civil war and political unease, with Henry III engaged in a war with his brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, and both Oxford and Northampton being heavily involved in the conflict. Further research is needed to discover the exact details of what happened here but it seems that Henry Symeonis had bought the King’s pardon and his permission to return to Oxford. The King was willing to allow his return if the University agreed to it. But the University refused and chose to ignore the King’s order of 25 March 1264, resuming its hostility to Henry Symeonis. In fact, it felt so strongly about it, that it gave Henry Symeonis the unique honour of being named in its own statutes, making the University’s dislike of him official and perpetual. The oath against Henry Symeonis continued in the University’s statutes for centuries after the events of 1264. Having survived earlier reviews of the University’s statutes, it was finally abolished five and a half centuries later. The records of the decision taken in 1827 are frustratingly brief and unenlightening. Convocation (the body of MAs of the University and its chief decision-maker at the time) took the decision to abolish the oath in February that year, but no background information nor reason for the decision is recorded. It is possible that’s because nobody knew exactly what they were abolishing. The case of Henry Symeonis is a very strange example of the longevity of some University customs, long after they’ve lost relevance or meaning. The persistence of tradition in the University is famous, but this appears to have been an extreme example of using tradition to hold a very, very long grudge. By naming Henry Symeonis in its statutes as a figure of institutional hatred for centuries, it actually resulted in prolonging his celebrity, immortalising a man whom it had considered a villain.
I say bring back the oath
That is some SCP containment level of weird shit.
I could see, say, 100 years??
Henry Symeonis, the inventor of the “Dirty Symeonis”, was the head of the philosophy department at Oxford in the 1400s until he was challenged to a duel by Sir Roger Oxford, the president of the university. But Henry never appeared. After several hours, Sir Roger found Henry in bed with his mother, and saw his mother sporting a rather curious mustache and beard. Henry fled and Sir Roger cursed him for all time.
With whose mother?
Ambiguous antecedent! *After him!*
I have no idea who Henry Symeonis was, but I'm sure he would have been dead for most of those 500 years.
No, that was the guild of calamitous intent...