University of Bologna

“ There were certainly more students at the University of Paris in the last quarter of the Thirteenth Century than there were at any time during the Nineteenth Century. This of itself is enough to startle modern complacency out of most of its ridiculous self-sufficiency. There can be scarcely a doubt that the University of Bologna at the time of its largest attendance had more students than any university of modern times, proud as we may be (and deservedly) of our immense institutions of learning. With regard to the English universities the presence of very large numbers is much more doubtful. ”

“ Passing from Florence, I came to Bologna,—learned Bologna; indeed an Italian city, full of expression, of physiognomy, so to speak. A woman should love Bologna, for there has the spark of intellect in woman been cherished with reverent care. Not in former ages only, but in this, Bologna raised a woman who was worthy to the dignities of its University, and in their Certosa they proudly show the monument to Matilda Tambroni, late Greek Professor there. ”

“ But the University of Bologna was to be constituted par excellence, not of one or more colleges of doctors, but of societies of students. The persons who came for legal instruction were not boys getting their first education in the Arts. ”

“ The ancient and honorable universities of Italy were, we believe, the first to recognize the capacity of women to give instruction of a high character. The University of Bologna, founded in 1116, was attended in the year 1250 by ten thousand students, engaged in the study of jurisprudence, of philosophy, and of medicine. ”

“ Bologna, which was a university of students, was governed directly by the general assembly of undergraduates. Whether governed by students or by masters,—alumni as we should say,—these historic institutions were essentially democratic, and the student seems on the whole to have been the most important figure; not only because at the beginning he formed the constituency for the popular teacher, but because later when these throngs of students formally organized he had the largest share of privileges and for a long time the controlling voice in the management of affairs. ”

“ The quick and keen perception of beauty seems to be an inherent and natural quality of the Italians, by which they are distinguished from other nations as much as the Greeks of antiquity.
Bologna has a famous university; yet the population are, in the mass, as ignorant as if the college were the other side of the Alps. Education has never been extended to the middling or lower classes, and, in a country like this, there might be a dozen seminaries of learning in every town, while the bulk of the population could not write their names. ”

“ The oldest and most frequented university in Italy, that of Bologna, is represented as having flourished in the twelfth century. Its prosperity in early times depended greatly on the personal conduct of the principal professors, who, when they were not satisfied with their entertainment, were in the habit of seceding with their pupils to other cities. Thus high schools were opened from time to time in Modena, Reggio, and elsewhere by teachers who broke the oaths that bound them to reside in Bologna, and fixed their centre of education in a rival town. ”

“ He is still, at sixty years of age, an active and hard-working professor at the University of Bologna, where his popularity with his students in the lecture-room is equal to that which his writings have gained throughout the land. ”

“ This privilege ultimately became merely a theoretical right at Bologna, where the teachers tended to become a close corporation of professors, like the Senatus of a Scottish University.
The Guild or College of Masters who taught law in (p. 017) the Studium of Bologna naturally resented the rise of the universities of students. The doctors, they said, should elect the rectors, as they do at Paris. The scholars follow no trade, they are merely the pupils of those who do practise a profession, and they have no right to choose rulers for themselves any more than the apprentices of the skinners. ”

“ Twelve thousand students from all parts of Europe are said to have been congregated there at once. The different nations had their colleges, and of colleges at Bologna there were fourteen. These were founded and endowed by the liberality of private persons; the university professors, the source of attraction to this multitude of students, were paid by the municipality, who found their reward in the fame, business, and importance brought to their town by the university. ”

“ Where students legislated for themselves, their rules were neither numerous nor detailed. Our information about life in the student-universities is, therefore, comparatively small, and it is with the universities of masters that we shall be chiefly concerned. It is, however, essential to understand the powers acquired by the student-guilds at Bologna, the institutions of which were reproduced by most of the Italian universities, by those of Spain and Portugal, and, much less accurately, by the smaller universities of France. ”

“ These long ranges of columnated arcades, impart great elegance to the general aspect of the place. The public square is ornamented by a magnificent fountain, which ranks among the greatest works of John of Bologna. In the gallery of the fine arts are some admirable pictures of Guido, Domenichino, and the Caraccis; and the Pontifical University is attended by a great number of students, while its halls are well filled by an extensive library, and large collections relating to natural science.
From Bologna Mr. Peale proceeded through Ferrara to Venice. ”

“ The Universities of Europe have always been of two [16] types, the one Magistral, like that of Paris, with which we are best acquainted, for Oxford and Cambridge are modelled on Paris, and the Masters of Arts form the ruling body; the other, the Student Universities, under the control of the undergraduates, of which Bologna was the mother. Hitherto Harvey had been a member of a Magistral University, now he became attached to a University of Students, for Padua was an offshoot of Bologna. ”

“ As a newly appointed Scottish judge is, to this day, admitted to his office by trying cases, so the Bologna doctor was admitted to his new dignity by an exercise in lecturing. The idea is common to many medieval institutions, and it survived at Bologna, even though the licentiate had, at his private examination, renounced the right of teaching. Our Englishman and his socii go together to the Cathedral, where he states a thesis and defends it against the attacks of other licentiates. ”

“ There were no buildings and no endowments to render a migration difficult, and migration did from time to time take place. The masters themselves were dependent upon fees for their livelihood; they were, at Bologna, frequently laymen with no benefice to fall back upon, and with wives and children to maintain. As time went on and the teaching masters became a limited number of professors, they were given salaries, at first by the student-universities themselves and afterwards by the city, which feared to offend the student-universities. ”

“ In the use of language, the jurists, with hardly any exceptions, are uncouth and barbarous. The great school of Bologna sent out all the earlier glossers. In the fourteenth century this famous university fell rather into decline; the jealousy of neighbouring states subjected its graduates to some disadvantage; and while the study of jurisprudence was less efficacious, it was more diffused. Italy alone had produced great masters of the science; the professors in France and Germany during the middle ages have left no great reputation. ”

“ The Universitates or guilds which were formed in the Studium Generale of Bologna were associations of foreign students. The lack of political unity in the Italian peninsula was one of the circumstances that led to the peculiar and characteristic constitution evolved by the Italian universities. A famous Studium in an Italian city state must of necessity attract a large proportion of foreign students. These foreign students had neither civil nor political rights; they were men "out of their own law," for whom the government under which they lived made small and uncertain provision. ”

“ It is not surprising, then, to find that the next school of world-wide reputation was that of law at Bologna which became the nucleus of a great university. It is only after man has looked out for his bodily needs and his property rights, that he comes to think of his duties toward himself, his fellow-men, and his Creator, and so the third of these great medieval schools, in time, was that of philosophy and theology, at Paris. ”

“ At Bologna, though not at Paris, the “permission to teach” soon became fictitious, only a small number of doctors being allowed to exercise the right of teaching in that university (Rashdall) .
In the faculty of arts of Paris, towards the end of the 13th century, the system was already more complicated than at Bologna. The baccalaureate, licentiateship, and mastership formed three distinct degrees. For admission to the baccalaureate a preliminary test or “Responsions” was first required, at which the candidate had to dispute in grammar or logic with a master. ”

“ And it can be truthfully affirmed that no seat of learning can point to such a long list of eminent scholars and teachers among the gentler sex as is to be found on the register of Bologna's famous university. ”

“ At Bologna Arabic influence was predominant in medicine; already in the later 13th century the medical course centres in the Canon of Avicenna and the medical treatises of Averroes, with the result that astrology became a regular subject of study, and degrees were granted in it. Most of the physicians of Bologna and Padua were astrologers, and were generally regarded as freethinkers and heretics. Bologna had at one time enjoyed the favour of Frederick II., and he had presented the University with copies of the Latin translations prepared by his order from Arabic and Greek. ”

“ Through local conditions, a course in medicine arose at Salerno; in civil and canon law at Bologna; and in theology at Paris. Bologna became the pattern for numerous universities in the South; and Paris for many in the North.
Popes and sovereigns granted privileges by charter to the various universities. The term ‘university’ originally signified a ‘corporation’ of students and teachers, and the students were usually grouped according to ‘nations.’ The teaching body was divided into four or five ‘faculties.’
The course in arts included the seven liberal arts and portions of Aristotle ”

“ The crowds of students who flocked to Bologna to study law, and who formed their guild or university on so strange a basis, mark the dawn of modern times fully as well as the academy at Florence or the foundation of a Vatican library. ”

“ Bologna had become the most important school in Europe for the study of Roman and Canonical law, and it was in Bologna that the undertakings of the university bookseller first became important. The booksellers were not only subject to the supervision of the university, but were also brought under the regulations of the town, and the town authorities undertook to prescribe prices as well for the renting as for the selling of the manuscripts, and also to prescribe penalties for the renting or selling of incorrect or incomplete texts. ”

“ In 1553 he took his doctor’s degree in medicine at Bologna, and in the following year was appointed professor of philosophy and also lecturer on botany at the university. In 1560 he was transferred to the chair of natural history. At his instance the senate of Bologna established in 1568 a botanical garden, of which he was appointed the first director. ”

“ In Italy the universities to a great extent owed their existence to the liberality of opulent citizens, who valued the institutions far too highly to disgust them by any infringement of their privileges. {225} Should, however, the city of Bologna show difficulties in their path, the scholars, well aware of a friendly reception elsewhere, packed up their valuables, or pawned them in case of need, and emigrated to Padua. If the commune of Padua grew in any way obnoxious to the university, the rectors and students at once decided on an excursion to Vercelli. ”

“ The simplest account of the new university origins is the most correct. It would appear that certain active-minded men of marked eminence began to give instruction in medical subjects at Salerno, and in law at Bologna, in a spirit and manner not previously attempted, to youths who had left the monastery and cathedral schools, and who desired to equip themselves for professional life. Pupils flocked to them; and the more able of these students, finding that there was a public demand for this higher specialized instruction, remained at headquarters, and themselves became teachers or doctors. ”

“ Cosmo Innes. Painfully deaf, but very friendly. Much interested about my written communications about Bologna. Will support me. I’m to send him facts from British Museum.
Muirhead—I had been taught to fear as surely opposed. So he was at first, but candid and earnest and kind, and said at last, ‘You have disposed of many of my objections.’ Much interested as to University statistics,—Bologna, etc. Suggested Balfour should write for information to Paris and Zurich. ”

“ Then, at a somewhat later period, the conviction became general among the intelligent members of the community that, unless work of this nature were officially sanctioned, no real advance in the knowledge of human anatomy could be made, and—what was probably of even greater importance in their estimation—that Bologna might at the same time lose a good deal of its superiority over its rivals as a centre of learning ”