Following the formal establishment of the University of Paris in 1200, the organisational and governance structures of the new institution were gradually consolidated around the four faculties of arts, medicine, law and theology. One aspect of this development was the creation of mechanisms for internal discipline and academic censure – an issue of particular concern for the theology faculty, which was repeatedly forced to deal with cases of alleged heresy among its members. Although the phenomenon of ‘academic heresy’ has been the subject of numerous studies – notably, that of Hans Thijssen for Paris – the process by which the faculty came to exercise jurisdiction in such cases remains obscure. Here Gregory Moule attempts to shed light on the question by examining the canon law background to the practice of intra-faculty censure, along with the procedures that governed it. Moule focuses his investigation on two particularly well-documented cases: that of the Franciscan Denis Foulechat (1364), who espoused the condemned doctrine of the poverty of Christ and his Apostles; and that of the Dominican John of Monteson (1387), whose stance on the Immaculate Conception brought him into conflict with the faculty. Moule's point of departure is the assertion by Pierre d'Ailly in relation to the Monteson case that the faculty possessed the authority to condemn heretical propositions put forward by bachelors and masters both ‘doctrinaliter’ and ‘judicialiter’. This suggests that the faculty's role went beyond mere ‘fraternal correction’ and that, by the late fourteenth century, it had acquired an element of judicial oversight over its members, independent of the local bishop or inquisition.

To understand how this situation arose, Moule argues, it is necessary first to look at the faculty's institutional development. He shows convincingly that the primary model for the body was the cathedral chapter, with the roles of the university chancellor, the faculty dean and the masters being seen as roughly analogous to those of the bishop, the cathedral dean and the canons respectively. The status of the faculty as an ecclesiastical corporation was confirmed by Pope Alexander iv’s bull Quasi lignum vitae following the secular-mendicant controversy of 1250–7.

Having demonstrated the close structural relationship between the faculty and a cathedral chapter, Moule traces the development of the model of shared jurisdiction between bishops and their canons, as outlined in Gratian's Decretum and the works of later commentators. This achieved its mature form in the work of Hostiensis, who clarified the circumstances in which a chapter could judge and punish its members. The question of canonical jurisdiction was of particular significance in the university context, as by the fourteenth century it was widely accepted that chapters exercised powers of correction, at least in relation to misdemeanour crimes. The canonist Johannes Andreae then took the key step of arguing that this type of jurisdiction was not limited to the cathedral church, opening up the possibility of its extension to bodies such as the theology faculty. Because, as Moule demonstrates, academic heresy was generally defined not as heresy per se, an offence that remained reserved to the episcopate, but as suspicion of heresy – that is to say, a misdemeanour – it fell within the faculty's purview. Further evidence of the close relationship between capitular and faculty jurisdiction is provided by the fact that the procedures used by the faculty in such cases closely mirrored those prescribed for cathedral chapters. The definitive contemporary statement on the issue is to be found in Pierre d'Ailly's Apologia on the Monteson case, which Moule discusses at length. D'Ailly grounded the faculty's authority in a combination of papal privilege, custom and Roman law, concluding that it exercised a territorially limited jurisdiction over its members comparable to that of a bishop and chapter within a diocese.

Finally, Moule assesses the role played by fraternal correction within the disciplinary process. In the Parisian context, he contends, fraternal admonition existed on a continuum with judicial correction, depending on whether a sin was regarded as secret or public. In its initial phases, therefore, the Monteson case was subject to fraternal correction, to allow students to report Monteson's offence to a prelate – here, the dean of faculty – without exposing themselves to the charge of calumny if their allegations proved unfounded. Throughout its handling of case, the faculty balanced the imperative of protecting the accused's reputation with that of preventing scandal, thus combining elements of fraternal and judicial correction.

This important study, based on Moule's doctoral dissertation, both builds on Thijssen's earlier work on academic censure in Paris and modifies some of its conclusions, particularly with regard to the role of fraternal correction in the process. Moule guides the reader expertly through the extensive body of ecclesiastical legislation and commentary on capitular and, by extension, faculty jurisdiction; his argument for the importance of the cathedral chapter as a model for the faculty's jurisdictional authority is particularly well made. While obviously of most relevance to medievalists, the work will also be of interest to scholars of the early modern period, as it provides valuable background to the role of the faculty in the sixteenth century, when it functioned as an arbiter of orthodoxy not just for its own members, but for the kingdom of France as a whole.