Germany. The head of each faculty was the dean; the head of each nation was the proctor. The rector, who in the first instance was head of the faculty of arts, by whom he was elected, was eventually head of the whole university. In congregations of the university matters were decided by a majority of faculties; the vote of the faculty of arts was determined by a majority of nations. The chancellor of Notre Dame, whose functions were now limited to the conferment of the licence, stood as such outside the university or gild altogether, though as a doctor of theology he was always a member of that faculty. Only “regents,” that is, masters actually engaged in teaching, had any right to be present or to vote in congregations. Neither the entire university nor the separate faculties had thus, it will be seen, originally a common head, and it was not until the middle of the 14th century that the rector became the head of the collective university, by the incorporation under him, first, of the students of the canon law and of medicine (which took place about the end of the 13th century), and, secondly, of the theologians, which took place about half a century later.
In the course of the 16th and 17th centuries this democratic constitution of the middle ages was largely superseded by the growth of a small oligarchy of officials. The tribunal of the university—the rector, deans and proctors—came to occupy a somewhat similar position to the old “Hebdomadal Board” of heads of colleges at Oxford and the Caput at Cambridge. Moreover, the teaching functions of the university, or rather of the faculty of arts, owing chiefly to the absence of any endowment for the regents or teaching graduates, practically passed to the colleges. Almost as much as the English universities, Paris came to be virtually reduced to a federation of colleges, though the colleges were at Paris less independent of university authority, while the smaller colleges sent their members to receive instruction in the larger ones (collèges de plein exercise), which received large numbers of non-foundation members. This state of things lasted till the French Revolution swept away the whole university system of the middle ages. It may be remarked that the famous Sorbonne was really the most The Sorbonne. celebrated college of Paris—founded by Robert de Sorbonne circa 1257—but as this college and the college of Navarre were the only college foundations which provided for students in theology, the close connexion of the former with the faculty and the use of its hall for the disputations of that body led to the word Sorbonne becoming a popular term for the theological faculty of Paris.
Apart from the broad differences in their organization, the very conception of learning, it will be observed, was different at Bologna from what it was at Paris. In the former it was entirely professional—designed, that is to say, to prepare the student for a definite and practical Paris and Bologna contrasted. career in after life; in the latter it was sought to provide a general mental training, and to attract the learner to studies which were speculative rather than practical. In the sequel, the less mercenary spirit in which Paris cultivated knowledge added immensely to her influence and reputation, which about the middle of the 14th century may be said to have reached their apogee. It had forty colleges, governed either by secular or religious communities, and numbered among its students representatives of every country in Europe (Jourdain, Excursions historiques, c. xiv.). The university became known as the great school where theology was studied in its most scientific spirit; and the decisions of its great doctors upon those abstruse questions which absorbed so much of the highest intellectual activity of the middle ages were regarded as almost final. The popes themselves, although averse from Papal policy. theological controversies, deemed it expedient to cultivate friendly relations with a centre of such importance for the purpose of securing their influence in a yet wider field. Down therefore to the time of the great schism (1378), they at once conciliated the university of Paris and consulted what they deemed to be the interests of the Roman see, by discouraging the creation of faculties of theology elsewhere. The apparent exceptions to this policy are easily explained: the four faculties of theology which they sanctioned in Italy—Pisa (1343), Florence (1349), Bologna (1362) and Padua (1363)—were designed to benefit the Italian monasteries, by saving the monks the expense and dangers of a long journey beyond the Alps; while that at Toulouse (1229) took its rise under circumstances entirely exceptional, being designed as a bulwark against the heresy of the Albigenses. The popes, on the other hand, favoured the creation of new faculties of law, and especially of the canon law, as the latter represented the source from which Rome derived her most warmly contested powers and prerogatives. The effects of this twofold policy were sufficiently intelligible: the withholding of each charter which it was sought to obtain for a new school of theology only served to augment the numbers that flocked to Paris; the bestowal of each new charter for a faculty of law served in like manner to divert a certain proportionate number from Bologna. These facts enable us to understand how it is that, in the 13th and 14th centuries, we find, even in France, a larger number of universities created after the model of Bologna than after that of Paris.
In their earliest stage, however, the importance of these new institutions was but imperfectly discerned alike by the civil and the ecclesiastical power, and the first four universities of Italy, after Bologna, rose into existence, like Bologna itself, without a charter from either pope or emperor. Of these the first were those of Reggio nell' Emilia and Modena, both of which are to be found mentioned as schools of civil law before the close of the 12th century. The latter, throughout Reggio and Modena. the 13th century, appears to have been resorted to by teachers of sufficient eminence to form a flourishing school, composed of students not only from the city itself, but also from a considerable distance. Both of them would seem to have been formed independently of Vicenza. Bologna, but the university of Vicenza was probably the outcome of a migration of the students from the former city, which took place in the year 1204. During the next fifty years Vicenza attained to considerable prosperity, and appears to have been recognized by Innocent III.; its students were divided into four nations, each with its own rector; and in 1264 it included in its professoriate teachers, not only of the civil law, but also of medicine, grammar and dialectic. The university of Padua was unquestionably the direct result of the migration in 1222 of a Padua. considerable number of students from Bologna. Some writers, indeed, have inferred that the “studium” in the latter city was transferred in its entirety, but the continued residence of a certain proportion in Bologna is proved by the fact that two years later we find them appealing to Honorius III. in a dispute with the civic authorities. In the year 1228 the students of Padua were compelled by circumstances to transfer their residence to Vercelli, and the latter city guaranteed them, besides other privileges, the right to rent no less than five hundred lodging-houses at a fixed rental for a period of eight years. At first Padua was a school only of the civil and canon law; and during the oppressive tyranny of Ezzelin (1237–60) the university maintained its existence with some difficulty. But in the latter part of the century it incorporated the faculties of grammar, rhetoric and medicine, and became known as one of the most flourishing schools of Italy, and a great centre of the Dominicans, at that time among the most active promoters of learning.
The university of Naples was founded by the emperor Frederick II. in the year 1225, as a school of theology, jurisprudence, the arts and medicine—his design being that his subjects in the kingdom of Naples should find in the capital adequate instruction in every branch of learning, Naples. and “not be compelled in the pursuit of knowledge to have recourse to foreign nations or to beg in other lands.” In the year 1231, however, he decreed that the faculty of medicine should cease to exist, and that the study should be pursued nowhere in the kingdom but at Salerno. The university never attained to much eminence, and after the death of Frederick came for a time altogether to an end, but was restored
