Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.3, 2018

 

The Establishment of Loan Chests and Secured Loans for Teachers and Students at the University of Oxford in the Middle Ages (Abstract)

 

Xu Shanwei and Qiu Yang

 

The loan chest, initiated at Oxford in 1240, was a charitable interest-free student loan fund peculiar to medieval English universities. By the mid-16th century, churchmen and secularelites had raised funds to set up 22 loan chests at the university with total funds of some ￡1880. The university drew up regulations for each chest and arranged specialist auditors and managers for routine management and supervision. The latter not only provided interest-free secured loans to eligible teachers, students, the university and its colleges in accordance with regulations, but also made flexible loans to the university and its components and members who were in dire need through “joint secured loans,” “continuous secured loans”, etc. The loan chests emerged in response to the “widespread poverty” of teachers and students and the paucity of funds in the medieval university itself; and the fashion of raising funds to encourage learning in Western Europe at the time helped it bear fruit. The establishment of the loan chests fostered the development of medieval English universities.