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UNIVERSITIES
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Valladolid, which received its charter from Pope Clement VI. Valladolid. in 1346, attained, however, to great celebrity; and the foreign teachers and students frequenting the university became so numerous that in 1373 King Enriquez II. caused an enactment to be passed for securing to them the same privileges as those already accorded to the native element. But the total number of the students in 1403 was only 116, and grammar and logic, along with jurisprudence (which was the principal study), constituted the sole curriculum. In 1418, however, at the council of Constance, Martin V. not only decreed that Valladolid should take rank as a studium generale, but also as a “universitas theologiae,” and that the new faculty should possess the same privileges as those of the same faculty in Paris. From this time accordingly the advance of the university in numbers was steady and continuous throughout the 15th century, and, along with Salamanca, it served as the model Alcalà. for Alcalà in 1499. The university which rose on the banks of the Henares and became famous under the direction of the eminent Ximenes, was removed in 1623 to Madrid; and for the next century and a half the foremost place among the universities of Spain must be assigned to Salamanca, to which Seville, in the south, stood in the relation of a kind of subsidiary school, having been founded in 1254 by Alphonso the Wise, Seville and Salamanca. simply for the study of Latin and of the Semitic languages, especially Arabic. Salamanca had been founded in 1243 by Ferdinand III. of Castile as a studium generale in the three faculties of jurisprudence, the arts and medicine. The king also extended his special protection to the students, granting them numerous privileges and immunities. Under his son Alphonso (above named) the university acquired a further development, and eventually included all the faculties save that of theology. But the main stress of its activity, as was the case with all the earlier Spanish universities until the beginning of the 15th century, was laid on the civil and the canon law. The provision for the payment of its professors was, however, at first so inadequate and precarious that in 1298 they by common consent suspended their lectures, in consequence of their scanty remuneration. A permanent remedy for this difficulty was thereupon provided, by the appropriation of a certain portion of the ecclesiastical revenues of the diocese for the purpose of augmenting the professors salaries, and the efforts of Martin V. established a school of theology which was afterwards regarded almost as an oracle by Catholic Europe. About the year 1600 the students are shown by the matriculation books to have numbered over 5000. According to Cervantes they were noted for their lawlessness. The earliest of the numerous colleges founded at Salamanca was that of St Bartholomew, long noted for its ancient library and valuable collection of manuscripts, which now form part of the royal library in Madrid.

The one university possessed by Portugal had its seat in medieval times alternately in Lisbon and in Coimbra, until, in Coimbra. the year 1537, it was permanently attached to the latter city. Its formal foundation took place in 1309, when it received from King Diniz a charter, the provisions of which were mainly taken from those of the charter given to Salamanca. In 1772 the university was entirely reconstituted.

Of the universities included in the present Austrian empire, Prague, which existed as a “studium” in the 13th century, was Prague. the earliest. It was at first frequented 'mainly by students from Styria and Austria, countries at that time ruled by the emperor Charles IV., who was also king of Bohemia, and at whose request Pope Clement VI., on the 26th of January 1347, promulgated a bull authorizing the foundation of a “studium generale” in all the faculties. In the following year Charles himself issued a charter for the foundation. This document, which, if original in character, would have been of much interest, has but few distinctive features of its own, its provisions being throughout adapted from those contained in the charters given by Frederick II. for the university of Naples and by Conrad for Salerno—almost the only important feature of difference being that Charles bestows on the students of Prague all the civil privileges and immunities which were enjoyed by the teachers of Paris and Bologna. Charles had himself been a student in Paris, and the organization of his new foundation was modelled on that university, a like division into four “nations” (although with different names) constituting one of the most marked features of imitation. The numerous students—and none of the medieval universities attracted in their earlier history a larger concourse—were drawn from a gradually widening area, which at length included, not only all parts of Germany, but also England, France, Lombardy, Hungary and Poland. Contemporary writers, with the exaggeration characteristic of medieval credulity, even speak of thirty thousand students as present in the university at one time—a statement for which Denifle proposes to substitute two thousand as a more probable estimate. It is certain, however, that Prague, prior to the foundation of Leipzig, was one of the most frequented centres of learning in Europe, and Paris suffered a considerable diminution in her numbers owing to the counter-attractions of the great studium of Slavonia.

The university of Cracow in Poland was founded in May 1364, by virtue of a charter given by King Casimir the Great, who Cracow. bestowed on it the same privileges as those possessed by the universities of Bologna and Padua. In the following September Urban V., in consideration of the remoteness of the city from other centres of education, constituted it a “studium generale” in all the faculties save that of theology. It is, however, doubtful whether these designs were carried into actual realization, for it is certain that, for a long time after the death of Casimir, there was no university whatever. Its real commencement must accordingly be considered to belong to the year 1400, when it was reconstituted, and the papal sanction was given for the incorporation of a faculty of theology. From this time its growth and prosperity were continuous; and with the year 1416 it had so far acquired a European reputation as to venture upon forwarding an expression of its views in connexion with the deliberations of the council of Constance. Towards the close of the 15th century the university is said to have been in high repute as a school of both astronomical and humanistic studies.

The Avignonese popes appear to have regarded the establishment of new faculties of theology with especial jealousy; and Vienna. when, in 1364, Duke Rudolph IV. founded the university of Vienna, with the design of constituting it a “studium generale” in all the faculties, Urban V. refused his asssent to the foundation of a theological school. Owing to the sudden death of Duke Rudolph, the university languished for the next twenty years, but after the accession of Duke Albert III., who may be regarded as its real founder, it acquired additional privileges, and its prosperity became marked and continuous. Like Prague, Vienna was for a long time distinguished by the comparatively little attention bestowed by its teachers on the study of the civil law.

No country in the 14th century was looked upon with greater disfavour at Rome than Hungary. It was stigmatized as the land of heresy and schism. When, accordingly, in 1367 King Louis applied to Urban V. for his sanction of the scheme of Fünfkirchen. founding a university at Fünfkirchen, Urban would not consent to the foundation of a faculty of theology, although theological learning was in special need of encouragement in those regions; the pontiff even made it a condition of his sanction for a studium generale that King Louis should first undertake to provide for the payment of the professors. We hear but little concerning the university after its foundation, and it is doubtful whether it survived for any length of time the close of the century. “The extreme east of civilized continental Europe in medieval times,” observes Denifle, “can be compared, so far as university education is concerned, only with the extreme west and the extreme south. In Hungary, as in Portugal and in Naples, there was constant fluctuation, but the west and the south, although troubled by yet greater commotions than Hungary, bore better fruit. Among all the countries possessed of universities in medieval