Chapter 58: Hogwarts Academy of Divine Arts (I)

Late autumn 1348, on the banks of the Thames, Oxford University

The University of Oxford, a world-renowned institution of higher learning, is located in Oxfordshire, England, and is known as the "cradle of genius and beauty".

The school was founded in 167 and is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Before the 2nd century, there were no universities in England, and people went to France and other Euro 6 countries to study. In 167, when the then King of England clashed with the King of France, the King of England, in a fit of rage, recalled the British scholars who had studied at the University of Paris and forbade them to go to the University of Paris. These scholars returned from Paris and gathered in Oxford to teach and study scholasticism. At the end of the 2nd century, these scholars in Oxford began to plan joint education. In 2o1, the University of Oxford had its first vice-chancellor.

In its long history, Oxford University has produced six British kings, twenty-six British ministers (including Gladstone, Attlee, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair), a number of foreign government brains and former US President Bill Clinton), forty Nobel laureates and a large number of famous scientists, such as the economist Adam Mi, the philosopher Francis Bacon, the poet Shelley, the writer Graham Green, the chemist Robert Boyle, the astronomer Edmundo Halley, etc. It has made important contributions to the development and progress of human civilization. So after the fall of the British Empire, the British generally regarded Oxford as a tradition, a symbol, a nostalgia and a quest where they could recall the good old days and relive their former glory - in modern Britain there is a proverb: "Walking through Oxford is like entering history".

However, in a world that has been changed by the time-travelers, the glory of Oxford University has come to an end before it really begins.

-- With the terrible Black Death landing on the six British islands, the invisible Grim Reaper also swept through Oxford, and hundreds of teachers and students soon died, and the quiet campus was filled with the stench of corpses, and there were no ones to pick up the bones and rotting corpses everywhere...... When Doraemon rushed over with four schoolchildren, he found less than a hundred survivors in the entire university town of Oxford, and more than half of them had become insane......

At this point, the history of the century-old school of Oxford University came to an abrupt end - seeing that the teachers and students of Oxford had basically died, and the rest were two or three big cats and kittens, which were not at all weather, Doraemon requisitioned the school building they left behind very comfortably, and made certain changes as needed, and then hung up the sign of "Hogwarts Academy of Divine Arts" under the flickering of Wang Qiu and Ma Tong.

- That's right, Hogwarts School of Magic, not Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

No way, after all, it is still the Middle Ages with a strong religious atmosphere, and the dawn of the Renaissance and humanism is only slightly revealed. If you directly play the sign of "Magic Academy", I am afraid that the guys in the Inquisition will jump - although the Inquisition is afraid that few people will die in the plague today, but the evil image of wizards taking the living people into pots to boil medicine has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people in Europe after all.

Therefore, even if he is an "angel", he does not have to worry about the difficulties of the church at all, even if it is just for the most basic image construction, the traversers feel that it is more appropriate not to use the name of magic and use the word magic instead, under the repeated emphasis of Knight Levi.

-- In this day and age, magic does not mean wonderful, romantic, and handsome, but is absolutely politically incorrect and ideologically wrong

So, Miss Ma Tong reluctantly put away the sign of "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry" and changed it to "Hogwarts Academy of Magic".

In fact, at the beginning, the time-travelers even wanted to replicate a Hogwarts school in the Harry Potter story in a beautiful place in the northern Scottish Highlands, with mountains and lakes in the background, exactly as described in the Harry Potter children's storybook.

But the problem is that, despite the horrors of the Black Death, both the captured King David II of Scotland and the lords and nobles of the Scottish Highlands are happy to donate any castle under their name as a base for training "healers" in order to dispel the deadly grim reaper. If the planned Hogwarts house could be built on its own turf, the Scots would have been better able to heal - the traditional hatred between Scotland and England would have been less important in the face of a menacing plague that seemed to wipe out humanity.

But the trouble is that Wang Qiu and Ma Tong worked tirelessly to survey all parts of Scotland in this era with Doraemon's [random door], and they couldn't find any castle that could accommodate thousands of people for a long time and was suitable for transforming into an academy, and the traffic conditions were also sad and tearful. With the backward productivity and pathetic transportation and logistics capacity of Scotland, it is really difficult to maintain a relatively high standard of life for so many teachers and students for a long time (whether in the East or the West, learned people are relatively high-status, and students are also cultural people, so the degree of food and clothing should not be too bad. ）

-- Scotland was so backward in those years that it was said to have become a feudal kingdom, but in fact it had evolved from a tribal confederation for only a few hundred years, and it was obvious that there were still many traces of obscurity in the primitive era. Anyone who has watched "Braveheart" will probably have a vague feeling that compared to the conquistadors of England in bright armor, the Scottish rebels in tattered clothes and colorful tattoos are like a bunch of barbarians.

And the fact is that even in the previous classical imperial era, because it was located north of the Great Wall of Britain and outside the borders of the Roman Empire, Scotland did not enjoy the blessings of ancient Roman civilization like England, and always stayed in the tribal era, and the faint fire of civilization was dying in the wilderness. When it came to the Dark Ages of the Middle Ages, it was even more slammed. Medieval Italians looked at the Scots in the same way that modern Europeans looked at the natives of Black Africa - the words and deeds were vulgar and uneducated, the key was that the climate in Scotland was too cold, the land was barren, the agricultural technology was also very poor, the yield per mu of crops was extremely low, and the farmers did not have much surplus grain to sell, so naturally they could not support too many people who were out of production.

At this time, the whole of Scotland had only a few hundred thousand people, and it was often not self-sufficient in food. If you find a random castle in the Scottish Highlands to expand, and then let a large number of teachers and students who are out of work move in, I am afraid that the poor country in the vicinity can be eaten up immediately

Well? Importing food, cloth, fuel and other daily necessities, as well as stationery and other teaching equipment from the outside world, without relying on the production of the surrounding areas? If you have the money, you can, but where are the roads and ports? And if you do that, the cost of living at Hogwarts will become very high, even too high for most people to bear—just as some African countries have seen internet fees as high as ten dollars an hour.

And, before the Industrial Revolution, for most Europeans, the Kingdom of England, located in the southern part of the island of Great Britain, was already a remote part of the countryside. As for the Kingdom of Scotland in the northern part of the island of Great Britain, it is a rural place among the countryside, and there are no eye-catching specialties such as gold, silver and amber, so it can basically be said that it is a poor country and a wild frontier that absolutely no one wants to go to. If Hogwarts were to be located in such a remote place, it would be similar to building a key school in Tibet in modern China: most of the people except the ascetics would not come

In addition, due to the low level of education of the Scots in this era, it may not be possible to find a literate person in a town, and it is difficult to recruit students locally - how can they learn spells if they don't even know the written word? However, if both the teachers and students are foreigners, the relationship with the locals will become extremely alienated, and it is easy to be mistaken for "intruders" and other characters, causing all kinds of unbelievable conflicts...... Don't underestimate the Scotsman's xù, the distance from that William right now. It was less than a hundred years before Wallace shouted "freedom" and raised his army

To sum up, in the spirit of science and responsibility, Wang Qiu and Ma Tong finally gave up their plan to build a school in the Scottish Highlands, and instead directly used the site left over from the University City of Oxford to replace it with the Hogwarts School brand - compared with the cold Scottish Highlands, the conditions in the Oxford Valley are much stronger: adjacent to the fertile London Plains, there is absolutely no need to worry about food; The River Thames runs through the city and is easily accessible. In medieval Europe, wooden ships of tens of tons could even sail from the mouth of the Thames to Oxford, without changing to 6 routes along the way.

To this end, the traversers also deliberately used Doraemon's 22nd-century automatic engineering machine Qì to introduce water from the Thames River and dig a "Yu Lake" at the entrance of the school - but the big octopus really didn't dare to put it in: what if the monster really overturned the boat and ate people?

In fact, after learning of the Angels' plans to build a school, the Doge of Venice, the Pope, and the Queen of Naples all vied for an invitation to get the school on their turf, but were ultimately rejected - it would be strange if Hogwarts House were not located in the UK

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“…… His Majesty the Pope, His Majesty the King, Mr. Governor, and His Majesty the Two Queens, please see, this is the Yu Lake that we dug for Hogwarts School, and with this lake, the ferry can go directly from the River Thames into the city of Oxford, and there is a space for boats to park near the school. If you switch to a hand-rowed dinghy, you can also go directly to the academies along the artificial river channel in the city, just like the layout of the water city of Venice......

Standing on a flat-bottomed boat, slowly sailing into Oxford, which has just completed the "urban rectification project", coming to a rippling open water, pointing to the huge beckoning cat statue on the island in the middle of the lake, Wang Qiu introduced to Pope Clement VI, Queen Giovanna of Naples, Queen Joan of England, King David of Scotland, André, Governor of Venice and other distinguished guests...... Students from all over Europe could reach Oxford by boat from other countries' ports, and merchants could sell what the college needed by water...... Now, the Black Death in Oxford has only just subsided, and the original 30,000 citizens have died very little, and most of those who have fled to the countryside have not returned, so the city still looks relatively deserted and unpopular. But it doesn't matter, I believe that after the establishment of the school, the city will definitely prosper soon......"

Of course, digging a lake to serve as an artificial harbor for Hogwarts School would be fine, but it would be too inexplicable to build an artificial mountain out of the flat Oxford Valley, and it would be like asking for trouble for yourself. As a result, the Hogwarts school was based on the layout of the University of Oxford, which was founded by scholars as a separate institution, and the University of Oxford was founded without a unified campus, with students and faculty living in different parts of the city and lecturing separately. Later, for the sake of management, the University of Oxford was formed as a joint operation of independent colleges, and this tradition has continued to be maintained throughout the modern day: Oxford College and its institutions are scattered throughout the city of Oxford. Each faculty consists of 3o-6o teachers and students who are engaged in teaching and research in different disciplines. The buildings of the university are also basically self-contained faculties.

To put it simply, the University of Oxford first had various faculties, and then they joined forces to form a university, in fact, many small companies joined forces to form a large company, and theoretically could withdraw their shares and split them out at any time -- this kind of thing happened once in Oxford, when the teachers and students of several colleges had a conflict and quit en masse, and then set up another Cambridge University -- instead of establishing a university first and then dividing it into colleges, as in China.

Oxford's colleges are home to many gems of medieval architecture and are clustered around the city centre. For example, the Saxon tower of St. Michael's Church, the Norman bunker and the ruins of the city walls give a sense of historical depth. The old streets are lined with European-style courtyard houses, each courtyard is a college, because at that time academia was the patent of the church, so the colleges are designed in a seminary building, the common impression of the first arrival in Oxford, will feel that each college is like those dilapidated ancient temples all over China, as soon as you enter the door, it gives people a sense of loneliness and desolation. Because each college is exactly like a medieval monastery, and most of the colleges are houses within houses. Some of the more elaborate colleges are even rivers, lakes, flowers, grasses, insects, fish, birds, and beasts. Most of the college buildings are antique medieval towers, so Oxford is also named "Tower City".

For example, if the city of Oxford is compared to the city of Suzhou, then the University of Oxford is equivalent to the Suzhou gardens scattered throughout the city of Suzhou, which are divided by large houses and markets, and "inlaid" in all corners of the city...... The disadvantage is that the various colleges are spatially isolated from each other and cannot be planned in a unified manner, but the advantage is that with the continuous development of Oxford, the city of Oxford has been completely swallowed up by universities and has become a veritable university town.

- After seeing the style of Oxford University with his own eyes, Wang Qiu finally understood why the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in "Harry Potter" was built to look like a military fortress, full of high walls and towers, as well as arrow holes and trenches. It turned out that the University of Oxford in the Middle Ages, and the University of Cambridge not far away, sometimes really had to fight offensive and defensive battles, such as Oxford University, which was besieged by the local citizens decades ago, and hundreds of college students were killed by the citizens of Oxford with bows and arrows, because they did not pay their debts on credit in taverns and brothels......

Therefore, Hogwarts' use of the school as a fortress and the division of four houses into a school is also very much in line with the common sense of a medieval university.

To get back to the point, for this copycat version of "Hogwarts Academy" that occupies the old site of Oxford, the traversers naturally divided it into four branches: Gryffindor House with the lion as the symbol, Ravenclaw House with the eagle as the symbol, Hufflepuff House with the badger as the symbol, Slytherin House with the snake as the symbol, and the symbol of the whole Hogwarts is a big fat cat...... This is not because Wang Qiu and Ma Tong blindly copy the setting of "Harry Potter" and make trouble for themselves, but out of some practical considerations:

First, the schools were divided according to the gender of the students, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were only female, and Gryffindor and Slytherin were exclusively male-negotiable—in the Middle Ages, it was already a shocking thing to admit women: in those days all universities accepted only men, and this was the case until the eighteenth century, if women were allowed to enroll, it would be possible to use the words "after the great plague, the countries were extremely scarce in manpower, and there were not enough men", "women were better suited to take care of the sick", And give examples of nuns who made cameo nurses and nurses to care for the sick and wounded during the plagues and wars of the Middle Ages. So let boys and girls go to class together, I'm afraid even the order of the "angel" can't withstand it.

(In England, the first girls' schools appeared in the early nineteenth century, as poor's colleges attached to monasteries, and noble girls' schools did not exist until the mid-nineteenth century.) The co-educational schools were almost in the twentieth century, and the aristocratic ladies of the earlier era were either illiterate or had to hire tutors. ）

Hufflepuff and Slytherin are taught in Italian, mainly from the Italian city-states and kingdoms. Gryffindor and Ravenclaw were taught in French, mainly from France and England, which at this time was still a remote feudal town in France, and had not been completely separated into a nation-state. And most of the British aristocratic families also originated in France, so all British gentlemen and ladies with a bit of status basically speak French, even as a daily language, and the official English text is also drafted in French, and only the uneducated and inferior people can only speak English......

In short, this copycat version of "Hogwarts Academy" converted from Oxford University roughly presents the following camp division:

Gryffindor House - Men of England and France;

Ravenclaw College - English and French Women;

Hufflepuff College - Italian Woman;

Slytherin House - Italian man.

The above arrangement fully reflects the political reality of the college, which is mainly composed of Italians, British, and French.

Of course, Hufflepuff House and Slytherin House are still above the ground, not cramped into any cellar like in Harry Potter.

As to why the four academies were given such names, the time-travelers explained that it was the name of the archangel, and the medieval Europeans were relieved.

In addition to the four colleges mentioned above, in view of the notable literacy rate in medieval Europe, the time-travelers also set up a literacy class in Oxford for illiterate scholars who could not read, and the few guys who had survived the plague at Oxford University were responsible for teaching the newcomers to read and write—but in this way, it was almost equivalent to turning Oxford University into a Hogwarts preschool, which was really high-end and high-end

However, although it is easy to recruit students, and the teaching venue is not difficult, the teachers are not so easy to train, and for the time being, they can only be made cameos by the time-travelers, because only they can use the so-called "magic" - although these so-called spells are just Doraemon's nonsense on the [Encyclopedia of Magic] stuff, but the question is, how could medieval Europeans read Japanese?

Fortunately, the traversers can also mark those Japanese "spells" with the corresponding romanization letters one by one, and then directly take out the combination of these romanization letters, write a booklet, and force the students of medieval European countries to memorize by rote, if it really can't work, just like the magicians in those cartoons, just take the "spell manual" to cast spells - anyway, there are only more than thirty spells in total, and there is no need for the caster to have any talent, no matter how difficult it is, as long as you read it fluently, Slowly, you will be able to unleash fireballs, lightning bolts, and healing spells.

What's more, in view of the current imminent threat of the plague, Hogwarts Academy is actually only running a short-term training class at present.

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“…… Due to the current European countries are still under the threat of plague explosion, in order to allow more Christians to enjoy the salvation of the Lord during their lifetime, instead of being robbed of their souls by death, we plan to train a group of healers as soon as possible, and the school period is arranged for three days, as long as they master the [Complete Healing Technique] and [Group Healing Technique], they can graduate and become teachers, and rush to various places to treat diseases and save people, and the learning of other spells can be delayed. ”

Wang Qiu explained to the distinguished guests as he took out a stack of small cards decorated with cartoon images of cat's heads and cat paw prints, with Japanese mantras translated into Roman accents on the front and back respectively, and distributed one to each of them, "...... And there is no need to prepare textbooks, just give each student a card of this kind and let them recite the above mantras fluently, and they can cast the holy light of healing In line with the principle of teaching and classifying, we basically recruited all the literate people who could be collected, and there were more than 1,000 people in total. Wait until they have traveled to various places before teaching the spell to the others around them, and the plague that has swept through Europe will soon be subsided......"

“…… Oh God, thank you angels for your generosity, that the humble and godly mortals may be saved from the torments of sickness......"

Pope Clement VI took the spell card with great excitement, and was so excited that he burst into tears, "...... But what about the rest of the spells? For example, the ultimate move you used to summon the Celestial Fire to burn down London? And the kind of spell that knocks down a street with a wave of your hand, will you also teach us? ”

He looked at Wang Qiu with a look of anticipation, and the rest of the kings, queens, and governors also quietly pricked up their ears.

“…… Of course, Mr. Pope, the purpose of this school is to spread the power of God across the earth, so that more good people can bathe in the gifts of the Lord (in fact, it is mainly for the sake of scoring and having fun)...... So, this time, all the thirty incantations that the gods are allowed to teach will be given to any pious person without reservation, and you can arrange for anyone who meets the criteria to come to Hogwarts to learn the art of gentlemen,...... However, in my opinion, it is better to take the power into your own hands than to rely on others on certain critical issues......"

Wang Qiu said with a calm smile, and at the same time handed a few cat-shaped student badges to the noble visitors, "...... I wonder if you are interested in becoming the first official students of Hogwarts and listening to our theology lessons in addition to attending the opening ceremony? ”

The King of Scotland, the Queen of England, the Doge of Venice, the Queen of Naples, and His Majesty the Pope all gladly agreed......

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Then, after three days of intensive study, more than a thousand "version healers" who had memorized mantras in the dark were finally able to barely recite healing spells that were very strange and awkward to them, and cast holy healing white light with their own hands...... Then, carefully carrying the healing spell card of the "Angel's Gift", he left Hogwarts and embarked on the great road to eradicate the plague and save the world—about half of them signed a lifelong contract with the Venetian Chamber of Commerce, and were considered to be Venetian merchants' workers; The remaining two-thirds are church members......

In addition, at the end of the class, Doraemon gave each of these therapists a pet cat and ordered them to be carefully raised, so as to educate the foolish people who are hostile to cats, and to make sure that every saved Christian deeply understands that cats are sacred beasts favored by God

At the same time, the first regular students of the "Hogwarts Academy of Divine Arts" officially opened after the class was completed, and the "angels" themselves taught and began to practice other spells that were more powerful and more "profound" in spells......

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