It is necessary, however, to bear in mind, on the one hand, that a university often had a vigorous virtual existence long before it obtained that legal recognition which entitled it, technically, to take rank as a “studium generale,” and, on the other hand, that hostels, halls, and colleges, together with complete courses in all the recognized branches of learning, were by no means necessarily involved in the earliest conception of a university. The university, in its earliest stage of development, appears to have been simply a scholastic guild,—a spontaneous combination, that is to say, of teachers or scholars, or of both combined, and formed probably on the analogy of the trades guilds, and the guilds of aliens in foreign cities, which, in the course of the 13th and 14th centuries, are to be found springing up in most of the great European centres. The design of these organizations, in the first instance, was little more than that of securing mutual protection,—for the craftsman, in the pursuit of his special calling,—for the alien, as lacking the rights and privileges inherited by the citizen. And so the university, composed as it was to a great extent of students from foreign countries, was a combination formed for the protection of its members from the extortion of the townsmen and the other annoyances incident in mediaeval times to residence in a foreign state. It was a first stage of development in connexion with these primary organizations, when the chancellor of the cathedral, or some other authority, began, as we shall shortly see, to confer on their masters the right of teaching at any similar centre that either already existed or might afterwards be formed throughout Europe,—“facultas ubique docendi.” It was a still further development when it began to be recognized that, without a licence from either pope, emperor, or king, no “studium generale” could be formed possessing this right of conferring degrees, which originally meant nothing more than licences to teach.

In order, however, clearly to understand the conditions under which the earliest universities came into existence, it is necessary to take account, not only of their organization, but also of their studies, and to recognize the main influences which, from the 6th to the 12th century, served to modify both the theory and the practice of education. In the former century, the schools of the Roman empire, which had down to that time kept alive the traditions of pagan education, had been almost entirely swept away by the barbaric invasions. The latter century marks the period when the institutions which supplied their place— the episcopal schools attached to the cathedrals and the monastic schools—attained to their highest degree of influence and reputation. Between these and the schools of the empire there existed an essential difference, in that the theory of education by which they were pervaded was in complete contrast to the simply secular theory of the schools of paganism. The cathedral school taught only what was supposed to be necessary for the education of the priest; the monastic school taught only what was supposed to be in harmony with the aims of the monk. But between the pagan system and the Christian system by which it had been superseded there yet existed something that was common to both: the latter, even in the narrow and meagre instruction which it imparted, could not altogether dispense with the ancient text-books, simply because there were no others in existence. Certain treatises of Aristotle, of Porphyry, of Martianus Capella, and of Boetius continued consequently to be used and studied; and in the slender outlines of pagan learning thus still kept in view, and in the exposition which they necessitated, we recognize the main cause which prevented the thought and literature of classic antiquity from falling altogether into oblivion.

Under the rule of the Merovingian dynasty even these scanty traditions of learning declined throughout the Frankish dominions; but in England the designs of Gregory the Great, as carried out by Theodorus, Bede, and Alcuin, resulted in a great revival of education and letters. The influence of this revival extended in the 8th and 9th centuries to Frankland, where Charles the Great, advised and aided by Alcuin, effected a memorable reformation, which included both the monastic and the cathedral schools; while the school attached to the imperial court, known as the Palace School, also became a famous centre of learned intercourse and instruction.

But the activity thus generated, and the interest in learning which it served for a time to diffuse, well nigh died out amid the anarchy which characterizes the 10th century in Latin Christendom, and it is at least questionable whether any real connexion can be shown to have existed between this earlier revival and that remarkable movement in which the university of Paris had its origin. On the whole, however, a clearly traced, although imperfectly continuous, succession of distinguished teachers has inclined the majority of those who have studied this obscure period to conclude that a certain tradition of learning, handed down from the famous school over which Alcuin presided at the great abbey of St Martin at Tours, continued to survive, and became the nucleus of the teaching in which the university took its rise. But, in order adequately to explain the remarkable development and novel character which that teaching assumed in the course of the 12th and 13th centuries, it is necessary to take account of the operation of certain more general causes to which the origin of the great majority of the earlier universities may in common unhesitatingly be referred. These causes are—(1) the introduction of new subjects of study, as embodied in a new or revived literature; (2) the adoption of new methods of teaching which were rendered necessary by the new studies; (3) the growing tendency to organization which accompanied the development and consolidation of the European nationalities.

That the earlier universities took their rise to a great extent in endeavours to obtain and provide instruction of a kind beyond the range of the monastic and cathedral schools appears to be very generally admitted, and this general fact has its value in assisting us to arrive at a conclusion with respect to the origin of the first European university,—that of Salerno in Italy, which became known as a school of medicine as early as the 9th century. The circumstances of its rise are extremely obscure, and whether it was monastic or secular in its origin has been much disputed. One writer derives its origin from an independent tradition of classical learning which continued to exist in Italy down to the 10th century. Another writer maintains that it had its commencement in the teaching at the famous Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, where the study of medicine was undoubtedly pursued. But various facts may be urged in contraven tion of such a theory. The school at Salerno, so far as its history can be traced, appears to have been entirely a secular community; it was distinguished also by its catholic spirit, and, at a time when Jews were the object of religious persecution throughout Europe, members of this nationality were to be found both as teachers and learners at Salerno. Situated, moreover, as it was on the seacoast, its communication with the neighbouring island of Sicily was easy and frequent; and it would accordingly seem far more probable that it was owing to the new knowledge gained from the Saracens, after their occupation of that island, that Salerno acquired its reputation. It was by a band of these invaders that Bertharius, abbot of Monte Cassino, and the author of certain medical treatises, was massacred along with his monks in the year 883. The Saracens were famed for their medical skill, and, by their translations of Galen and Hippocrates, did much to advance the study; and, according to Jourdain, there were translations from the Arabic into Latin long before the time of Constantine the African, but these versions have perished. In the course of the 11th century, under the teaching of Constantine the African (d. 1087), the celebrity of Salerno became diffused all over Europe. Ordericus Vitalis, who wrote in the first half of the 12th century, speaks of it as then long famous. In 1231 it was constituted by the emperor Frederick II. the only school of medicine in the kingdom of Naples.

It was at a considerable interval after the rise of the school at Salerno, about the year 1113, that Irnerius commenced at Bologna his lectures on the civil law. This instruction, again, was of a kind which the monastic and cathedral schools could not supply, and it also met a new and pressing want. The states of Lombardy were at this time rising rapidly in population and in wealth; and the greater complexity of their political relations, their increasing manufactures and commerce, called for a more definite application of the principles embodied in the codes that had been handed down by Theodosius and Justinian. But the distinctly secular character of this new study, and its intimate connexion with the claims and prerogatives of the Western emperor, aroused at first the susceptibilities of the Roman see, and for a time Bologna and its civilians were regarded by the church with distrust and even with alarm. These sentiments were not, however, of long duration. In the year 1151 the appearance of the Decretum of Gratian, largely compiled from spurious documents, invested the studies of the canonist with fresh importance; and numerous decrees of past and almost forgotten pontiffs now claimed to take their stand side by side with the enactments contained in the Corpus Juris Civilis. They constituted, in fact, the main basis of those new pretensions asserted with so much success by the popedom in the course of the 12th and 13th centuries. It was necessary, accordingly, that the Decreturn should be known and studied beyond the walls of the monastery or the episcopal palace, and that its pages should receive authoritative exposition at some common centre of instruction. Such a centre was to be found in Bologna. The needs of the secular student and of the ecclesiastica! student were thus brought for a time into accord, and from the days of Irnerius down to the close of the 13th century we have satisfactory evidence that Bologna was generally recognized as the chief school both of the civil and the canon law. It has indeed been asserted that university degrees were instituted there as early as the pontificate of Eugenius III. (1145-53), but the statement rests on no good authority, and is in every way improbable. There is, however, another tradition which is in better harmony with the known facts. "When Barbarossa marched his forces into Italy on his memorable expedition of 1155, and reasserted those imperial claims which had so long lain dormant, the professors of the civil law and their scholars, but more especially the foreign students, gathered round the Western representative of the Roman Caesars, and besought his intervention in their favour in their relations with the citizens of Bologna. A large proportion of the students were probably from Germany; and it did not escape Frederick’s penetration that the civilian might prove an invaluable ally in the assertion of his imperial pretensions. He received the suppliants graciously, and, finding that their grievances were real, especially against the landlords in whose houses they were domiciled, he granted the foreign students substantial protection, by conferring on them certain special immunities and privileges (November 1158). These privileges were embodied in the celebrated Authentica, Habita, in the Corpus Juris Civilis of the empire (bk. iv. tit. 13), and were eventually extended so as to include all the other universities of Italy. In them we may discern the precedent for that state protection of the university which, however essential at one time for the security and freedom of the teacher and the taught, has been far from proving an unmixed benefit,— the influence which the civil power has thus been able to exert being too often wielded for the suppression of that very liberty of thought and inquiry from which the earlier universities derived in no small measure their importance and their fame.

But, though there was a flourishing school of study, it is to be observed that Bologna did not possess a university so early as 1158. Its first university was not constituted until the close of the 12th century. The “universities” at Bologna were, as Denifle has shown, really student guilds, formed under influences quite distinct from the protecting clauses of the Authentica, and suggested, as already noted, by the precedent of those foreign guilds which, in the course of the 12th century, began to rise throughout western Europe. They had their origin in the absolute necessity, under which residents in a foreign city found themselves, of obtaining by combination that protection and those rights which they could not claim as citizens. These societies were modelled, Denifle considers, not on the trade guilds which rose in Bologna in the 13 th century, but on the Teutonic guilds which arose nearly a century earlier in north-western Europe, being essentially “spontaneous confederations of aliens on a foreign soil.” Originally, they did not include the native student element.

The power resulting from this principle of combination, when superadded to the privileges conferred by Barbarossa, gave to the students of Bologna a superiority of which they were not slow to avail themselves. Under the leadership of their rector, they extorted from the citizens concessions which raised them from the condition of an oppressed to that of a specially privileged class. The same principle, when put in force against the professors, reduced the latter to a position of humble deference to the very body whom they were called upon to instruct, and imparted to the entire university that essentially democratic character by which it was afterwards distinguished. It is not surprising that such advantages should have led to an imitation and extension of the principle by which they were obtained. Denifle considers that the “universities” at Bologna were at one time certainly more than four in number, and we know that the Italian students alone were subdivided into two,—the Tuscans and the Lombards. In the centres formed by secession from the parent body a like subdivision took place. At Vercelli there were four “universitates,” composed respectively of Italians, English, Provençale, and Germans; at Padua there were similar divisions into Italians, French (i.e., Francigenae, comprising both English and Normans), Provençale (including Spaniards and Catalans). When accordingly we learn from Odofred that in the time of the eminent jurist Azo, who lectured at Bologna about 1200, the number of the students there amounted to some ten thousand, of whom the majority were foreigners, it seems reasonable to conclude that the number of these confederations of students (“societates scholarium ”) at Bologna was yet greater. It is certain that they were not formed simultaneously, but, similarly to the free guilds, one after the other,—the last in order being that of the Tuscans, which was composed of students from Tuscany, the Campagna, and Rome. Nor are we, again, to look upon them as in any way the outcome of those democratic principles which found favour in Bologna, but rather as originating in the traditional home associations of the foreign students, fostered, however, by the peculiar conditions of their university life. As the Tuscan division (the one least in sympathy, in most respects, with Teutonic institutions) was the last formed, so, Denifle conjectures, the German “university” may have introduced the conception which was successively adopted by the other nationalities.

In marked resemblance to the guilds, these confederations were presided over by a common head,—the “rector scholarium,” an obvious imitation of the “rector societatum” or “artium” of the guild, but to be carefully distinguished from the “rector scholarum,” or director of the studies, with whose function the former officer had, at this time, nothing in common. Like the guilds, again, the different nations were represented by their “consiliarii,” a deliberative assembly with whom the rector habitually took counsel.

While recognizing the essentially democratic character of the constitution of these communities, it is to be remembered that the students, unlike the majority at Paris and later universities, were mostly at this time of mature years. As the civil law and the canon law were at first the only branches of study, the class whom they attracted were often men already filling office in some department of the church or state,—archdeacons, the heads of schools, canons of cathedrals, and like functionaries forming a considerable element in the aggregate. It has been observed, indeed, that the permission accorded them by Frederick I. of choosing, in all cases of dispute, their own tribunal, thus constituting them, to a great extent, sui juris, seems to presuppose a certain maturity of judgment among those on whom this discretionary power was bestowed.

With the middle of the 13th century, these various confederations became blended, for the first time, into one or other of the two great divisions already referred to,—those of theUltramontani and the Citramontani, JohannesdeVaranis being rector of the former and Pantaleon de Venetiis of the latter. Innocent IV., in according his sanction to the new statutes of the university in 1253, refers to them as drawn up by the “rectores et universitas scholarium Bononiensium.” With the commencement of the 16th century, the two corporations were combined under one rector.

About the year 1200 were formed the two faculties of medicine and philosophy (or the arts), the former being somewhat the earlier. It was developed, as that of the civil 1aw had been developed, by a succession of able teachers, among whom Thaddeus Alderottus was especially eminent. The faculty of arts, down to the 14th century, scarcely attained to equal eminence. The teaching of theology remained for a long time exclusively in the hands of the Dominicans; and it was not until the year 1360 that Innocent VI. recognized the university as a “studium generale” in this branch,—in other words, as a place of theological education for all students, with the power of conferring degrees of universal validity.

In the year 1371 the cardinal legate, Anglicus, compiled, as chief director of ecclesiastical affairs in the city, an account of the university, which he presented to Urban V. The information it supplies is, however, defective, owing to the fact that only the professors who were in receipt of salaries from the municipality are mentioned. Of these there were twelve of civil law and six of canon law; three of medicine, three of practical medicine, and one of surgery; two of logic, and one each of astrology, rhetoric, and notarial practice. The professors of theology, who, as members of the religious orders, received no state remuneration, are unmentioned.

Colleges existed at Bologna at a very early date, but it is not until the 14th century that we find them possessing any organization. They were designed solely for necessitous students, not being natives of Bologna. A separate house, with a certain fund for the maintenance of a specified number of scholars, was all that was originally contemplated. Such was the character of that founded by Zoen, bishop of Avignon, in February 1256 (O.S.), the same month and year, it is to be noted, in which the Sorbonne was founded in Paris. It was designed for the maintenance of eight scholars from the province of Avignon, under the supervision of three canons of the church, maintaining themselves in the university. Each scholar was to receive 24 Bolognese lire annually for five years. The college of Brescia was founded in 1326 by William of Brescia, archdeacon of Bologna, for poor foreign students without distinction as to nationality. The Spanish college, founded in 1364, for twenty-four Spanish scholars and two chaplains, is noted by Denifle as the one college founded in mediaeval times which still exists on the Continent.

Of the general fact that the early universities rose in response to...