University of Padua

“ Its hundred churches are vast museums of sculpture and painting. Its university, which the Bolognese boast is the oldest in Europe, rivalled Padua in its glory, and now rivals it in its decay. Its two famous leaning towers,—the rent in the bottom of one is quite visible,—are bending from age, and will one day topple over, and pour a deluge of old bricks upon the adjoining tenements. Its "Academy of the Fine Arts" is, after Rome and Florence, the finest in Italy. ”

“ The following statute of the University of Padua represented fairly enough the status of students in all the universities of France and of Italy: “Students must be considered as citizens in what concerns the advantages, but not in that which constitutes the burdens of citizens.” Under this same principle, members of the universities were also exempt from military service.
The authorities of the University of Paris exercised a very direct control from the outset over all the details of the business of making, renting, and selling books. ”

“ These patricians created a body of restless opposition in the Grand Council, agitated the bourgeoisie and proletariate with the expectation of impending changes, and succeeded in effecting some salutary but superficial reforms. Outside the sphere of politics, that spirit of innovation which in France was silently but surely working toward the Revolution, made itself felt among the educated classes. The University of Padua, while preserving external forms of mediævalism in its discipline and teaching, fermented with the physical hypotheses of modern science. ”

“ After all my wanderings my conscience reproached me with my culpable neglect of the art in whose elements I had been grounded by the ever-revered Gazophylacius. I resumed the medical studies which I was convinced were best suited to my bent and upbringing, by adopting the features and the status of a freshman in the University of Padua. As the freshman, under no possible circumstances, could have passed his examinations you will see that I conferred on him no small obligation by the assistance which I rendered. ”

“ Facciolati’s mastery of Latin style, as displayed in his epistles, has been very much admired for its purity and grace. In or about 1739 Facciolati undertook the continuation of Papadopoli’s history of the university of Padua, carrying it on to his own day. Facciolati was known over all Europe as one of the most enlightened and zealous teachers of the time ”

“ At the foot of the stairway ascending to the schools from the court is the statue of the learned lady who was once a professor in the University, and who, if her likeness belie not her looks, must have given a great charm to student life in other times. At present there are no lady professors at Padua, any more than at Harvard ”

“ Padua like Athens humanized its conquerors. It became the University town of Venice, as Pavia was of Milan, and it was for a long time protected from the assaults of the Catholic reaction by its rulers, who [Pg 26] possibly were instigated rather by political jealousy of the Papacy as a temporal power, than by any enthusiasm for the humanist and scientific studies of which Padua was the most illustrious home south of the Alps; studies which the powers of the Church began already to recognize as their most dangerous foes. ”

“ No public schools were founded, for, as Count Viaro Capodistria informed the British parliament much later, the Venetian senate never allowed such institutions to be established in the Ionian islands [236] . The administration was content to pay a few teachers of Greek and Italian in Corfù and one in each of the other islands. There was also some private instruction to be had, and the promising young men of the best families, eager to be doctors or lawyers, were sent to complete their education at the university of Padua. ”

“ The hasty traveller, indeed, who stops for an hour or two on his way to Venice to take a hurried glance at the chapel of Giotto scarcely dreams as he treads the grass-grown streets of the deserted city,
‘Where wasteful time debateth with decay,’
how large a space Padua has filled in the intellectual life of Europe. [13] And yet it was once a university with 18,000 students; a true republic of letters, and a republic of most democratic kind. The Professors, originally elected by the students, were in Harvey’s time still nominated by the University. ”

“ PADUA. The first musical academy at Padua was that of the 'Costanti,' founded in 1566 by the nobles of the city. It embraced, besides music, natural philosophy, ethics, oratory, poetry, and languages. The first president was Francesco Portenari. But that the science of music must have been studied far earlier in the ancient Paduan university appears from the writings of Marchetto di Padova, the next writer upon music after Guido d'Arezzo, which date between the years 1274 and 1309. Prosdocimo di Beldomando, the musical theorist, was also a native of Padua. ”

“ By making a very early ride I succeeded in reaching Padua at ten o’clock this morning; visited the university so famed of old, the churches, the splendid Caffè Pedrocchi, the Botanic Garden,—the most ancient in Italy, of which Alpinius, the elder and the younger, and Pontedera were the directors. It is under the care of Visiani, [98] to whom I brought a letter from Bentham, and who politely showed me all I wished to see. The university is a queer old place indeed, and the lecture-rooms the most dark, gloomy, and incommodious places you can conceive ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are a great number of villas on the banks of the Brenta, well built in the best style of architecture, the most of them after the designs of Palladio, the Prince of modern architects.
Padua is an exceedingly large city: but its arcades and the narrowness of the streets give it a gloomy appearance. There are however some beautiful promenades in the suburbs. There are also the remains of an ancient Arena. Padua is famous for its Seminario or University, which is a superb edifice. The Church of St Anthony of Padua is of vast size, having six cupolas. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fame of Fabricius and his school was no doubt the chief reason which led Harvey to Padua, but there was an additional reason which led his friends to concur cheerfully in his resolve. Padua was the University town of Venice, and the tolerance which it enjoyed under the protection of the great commercial republic rendered it a much safer place of residence for a Protestant than any of the German Universities, or even than its fellows in Italy. ”

“ Although the liberality which our University has shown in the instance of ladies, who desire to become graduates, is in very recent times perhaps a matter of some note, yet I may remark that in those Universities which first spread the light of the renascent learning through Europe, learned ladies were never wanting, and if one looks to the history of Padua, he recognises the propriety of Shakspeare drawing his advocate from that University. ”

“ It was a disadvantage for carrying on scholarly publishing undertakings in Venice, that the city possessed no university, a disadvantage that was only partly offset by the proximity of Padua, which early in the fifteenth century had come under Venetian rule. A university would of course have been of service to a publisher like Aldus, not only in supplying a home market for his books, but in placing at his disposal scholarly assistants whose services could be utilised in editing the texts and in supervising their type-setting. ”

“ Very early in the century Vicenza, Reggio, and Arezzo became university towns. Before the first quarter of the century was finished there were universities at Padua, at Naples, and at Vercelli. In spite of the troublous times and the great reduction in the population of Rome there was a university founded in connection with the Roman Curia, that is the Papal Court, before the middle of the century, and Siena and Piacenza had founded rival university institutions. Perugia had a famous school which became a complete university early in the Fourteenth Century. ”

“ In these days when there are so many calls on the funds of the municipality as on those of individuals, no one looks for such liberality as that. But something at least might be done, and certainly when we look to the history of great cities in the past, it can hardly be said to be an improper disposition of municipal funds, when at any rate within moderate limits they are expended on the advancement of learning and science. Padua, another great city, supported at one time thirty Professors in its University—Professors of Law and Medicine and General Literature. ”

“ But in October 1412 the lectures were recommenced, and the university entered upon the most brilliant period of its existence. Its professors throughout the 15th century were men of distinguished ability, attracted by munificent salaries such as but few other universities could offer, while in the number of students who resorted thither from other countries, and more especially for the study of the civil law, Pavia had no Arezzo. rival in Italy but Padua. Arezzo appears to have been known as a centre of the same study so early as 1215, and its earliest statutes are assigned to the year 1255. ”

“ He had already shown a fondness for observations upon the organization of animals, but it is unlikely that he was able to cultivate this at the university. There his studies consisted mainly of Latin and Greek, with some training in debate and elementary instruction in the science of physics.
At Padua.—In 1597, at the age of nineteen, he was graduated with the Arts degree, and the following year he turned his steps toward Italy in search of the best medical instruction that could be found at that time in all the world. ”

“ Thus a large all-round increase in secondary and higher education is shown—satisfactory in many respects, but showing that more young men devote themselves to the learned professions (especially to the law) than the economic condition of the country will justify. There are 21 universities—Bologna, Cagliari, Camerino, Catania, Ferrara, Genoa, Macerata, Messina, Modena, Naples, Padua, Palermo, Parma, Pavia, Perugia, Pisa, Rome, Sassari, Siena, Turin, Urbino, of which Camerino, Ferrara, Perugia and Urbino are not state institutions; university courses are also given at Aquila, Bari and Catanzaro. ”

“ From a similar dissension between the citizens and scholars seems to have been caused the emigration to Padua, where the secessionist professors and scholars established a university which soon became the successful rival of Bologna.
In the year 1222 the Emperor Frederick II., from spite to the Bolognese, and a desire of promoting the interests of his newly erected university of Naples, commanded all the students and professors at Bologna who belonged as subjects to his Sicilian dominions to repair to Naples. ”

“ The life of a student at Padua was much livelier than the monastic seclusion of an English university. He need not attend many lectures, for, as Thomas Hoby explains, after a scholar has been elected by the rectors, "He is by his scholarship bound to no lectures, nor nothing elles but what he lyst himselfe to go to." ”

“ But we have dwelt too long, perhaps, on those who voyaged to see knick-knacks, and to gain accomplishments at French academies. Though the academies were characteristic of the seventeenth century, there were other centres of education sought by Englishmen abroad. The study of medicine, particularly, took many students to Padua or Paris, for the Continent was far ahead of England in scientific work. [297] Sir Thomas Browne's son studied anatomy at Padua with Sir John Finch, who had settled there and was afterwards chosen syndic of the university. ”

“ The Prince of Modena seem’d to be mightily delighted with the Entertainment. In a few Days after it, he set out from Venice. I thought also of proceeding in my Travels thro’158 Italy, and went to Padua with the same Gondoliers that had serv’d me while I stay’d at Venice.
[24] Padua is an Episcopal City, famous for its University; and more ancient, they say, than Rome and Venice. ’Tis thought to have been founded by Antenor the Trojan Prince, whose Tomb is still to be seen there. Its Soil is extremely fertile, and from thence came the Proverb, Bologne la Grasse, mais Padoue la passe, i. e. ”

“ Italy was fruitful in universities, for, to mention only prominent names, there were Padua, Pavia, Salerno, and Naples, besides Rome, where the tradition of learning, especially sacred learning, was never quite broken. Padua was an offshoot from Bologna, and became famous in the XIIIth century for its devotion to classic literature and the liberal arts. ”