Barbarossa grants privileges to foreign students at Bologna.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).[1] These privileges were embodied in the celebrated Authentica, ffabita, 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.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 13th 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.
Democratic character of these communities.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 leader ship of their rector, they extorted from the citizens con cessions which raised them from the condition of an op pressed 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. Other similar communities in Italy.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, Provencals, and Germans; at Padua there were similar divisions into Italians, French (i.e., Frandgenae, comprising both English and Normans), Provencals (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 com posed 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.
The rector.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.
Mature age of the students.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.
Amalgamation of the "universitates" in two divisions.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 thellltramontani and the Citramontani,JohannesdeVaranis being rector of the former and Pantaleon de Venetiis of the into two latter. Innocent IV., in according his sanction to the new divisions, 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.
Faculties instituted.About the year 1200 were formed the two faculties of medicine and philosophy (or the arts[2]), the former being
- ↑ See Savigny, Gesch. d. rom. Rechts, iii. 152, 491-492. See also Giesebrecht, Gesch. d. Kaiserzeit (ed. 1880), v. 51-52. The story is preserved in a recently discovered metrical composition descriptive of the history of Frederick I.; see Sitzungsberichte d. Bairisch. Akad. d. Wissenschaft, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, 1879, ii. 285. Its authenticity is called in question by Denifle, but it would seem to be quite in harmony with the known facts.
- ↑ The arts course of study was that represented by the ancient trivium (i.e., grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (i.e., arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy), as handed down from the schools of the Roman empire. See J. B. Mullinger, History of the University of Cambridge, i. 24-27.
