The Imperial University of Constantinople, sometimes known as the University of the Palace Hall of Magnaura (Greek: Πανδιδακτήριον τῆς Μαγναύρας), was an Eastern Roman educational institution that could trace its corporate origins to 425 AD, when the emperor Theodosius II founded the Pandidacterium (Medieval Greek: Πανδιδακτήριον).[1]
The Pandidakterion was refounded in 1046[2] by Constantine IX Monomachos who created the Departments of Law (Διδασκαλεῖον τῶν Νόμων) and Philosophy (Γυμνάσιον).[3]
At the time various economic schools, colleges, polytechnics, libraries and fine arts academies also operated in the city of Constantinople.
- ^ "The Formation of the Hellenic Christian Mind" by Demetrios Constantelos, ISBN 0-89241-588-6: "The fifth century marked a definite turning point in Byzantine higher education. Theodosios ΙΙ founded in 425 a major university with 31 chairs for law, philosophy, medicine, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, rhetoric and other subjects. Fifteen chairs were assigned to Latin and 16 to Greek. The university was reorganized by Michael III (842–867) and flourished down to the fourteenth century".
- ^ John H. Rosser, Historical Dictionary of Byzantium, Scarecrow Press, 2001, p. xxx.
- ^ Aleksandr Petrovich Kazhdan, Annabel Jane Wharton, Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, University of California Press, 1985, p. 122.