Medieval university

This article is about Western European institutions. For other early centers of higher learning, see Ancient higher-learning institutions. For an overview of medieval foundations, see List of medieval universities.
Illustration from a 16th-century manuscript showing a meeting of doctors at the University of Paris

A medieval university was a corporation organized during the Middle Ages for the purposes of higher education. The first Western European institutions generally considered to be universities were established in present-day Italy, including the Kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, and the Kingdoms of England, France, Spain, Portugal, and Scotland between the 11th and 15th centuries for the study of the arts and the higher disciplines of theology, law, and medicine.[1] These universities evolved from much older Christian cathedral schools and monastic schools,[2][3][4] and it is difficult to define the exact date when they became true universities, though the lists of studia generalia for higher education in Europe held by the Vatican are a useful guide.

The word universitas originally applied only to the scholastic guilds—that is, the corporation of students and masters—within the studium, and it was always modified, as universitas magistrorum, universitas scholarium, or universitas magistrorum et scholarium. Eventually, probably in the late 14th century, the term began to appear by itself to exclusively mean a self-regulating community of teachers and scholars recognized and sanctioned by civil or ecclesiastical authority.[5]

From the Early Modern period onward, this Western-style organizational form gradually spread from the medieval Latin west across the globe, eventually replacing all other higher-learning institutions and becoming the pre-eminent model for higher education everywhere.[6]

  1. ^ de Ridder-Symoens (1992), pp. 47–55
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Riche was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Rüegg, Walter: "Foreword. The University as a European Institution", in: A History of the University in Europe. Vol. 1: Universities in the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-521-36105-2, pp. XIX–XX
  4. ^ Verger, Jacques. "The Universities and Scholasticism," in The New Cambridge Medieval History. Volume V: c. 1198–c. 1300. Cambridge University Press, 2007. p. 257.
  5. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica: History of Education. The development of the universities.
  6. ^ Rüegg, Walter (ed.): Geschichte der Universität in Europa, 3 vols., Munich: C.H. Beck, 1993, ISBN 3-406-36956-1