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 in 1258 by King Manfred. In 1266 its faculty of medicine was reconstituted, and from 1272–74 Thomas Aquinas was one of its teachers of theology. The commencement of the university

of Vercelli belongs to about the year 1228; it probably included, like Naples, all the faculties, but would seem to have been regarded with little favour by the Roman See, and by the year 1372 had ceased to exist, although mention off colleges of law and medicine is to be found after that date. The two universities of Piacenza and Pavia

stand in close connexion with each other. The former is noted by Denifle as the earliest in Italy which was founded by virtue of a papal charter (6th February 1248), although the scheme remained for a long time inoperative. At length, in the year 1398, the university was reconstituted by Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, duke of Milan, who in the same year caused the university of Pavia to be transferred thither. Piacenza now became the scene of a sudden but short-lived academic prosperity. We are told of no less than twenty seven professors of the civil law—among them the celebrated Baldus; of twenty-two professors of medicine; of professors of philosophy, astrology, grammar and rhetoric; and of lecturers on Seneca and Dante. The faculty of theology would appear, however, never to have been duly constituted, and but one lecturer in this faculty is mentioned. With the death of Galeazzo in 1402, this precarious activity came suddenly to an end; and in 1404 the university had ceased to exist. Its history is, indeed, unintelligible, unless taken in conjunction with that of Pavia. Even before Irnerius taught at Bologna,

Pavia had been widely known as a seat of legal studies, and more especially of the Lombard law, although the evidence is wanting which would serve to establish a direct connexion between this early school and the university which was founded there in 1361, by virtue of the charter granted by the emperor Charles IV. The new “studium” included faculties of jurisprudence, philosophy, medicine and the arts, and its students were formally taken under the imperial protection, and endowed with privileges identical with those which had been granted to Paris, Bologna, Oxford, Orleans and Montpellier; but its existence in Pavia was suddenly suspended by the removal, above noted, of its students to Piacenza. It shared again in the decline which overtook the university of Piacenza after the death of Giovanni Galeazzo, and during the period from 1404 to 1412 it altogether ceased to exist. 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

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. By that time it had become a school of arts and medicine also; but for a considerable period after it was almost entirely deserted, and is almost unmentioned until the year 1338, when it acquired new importance by the accession of several eminent jurists from Bologna. In May 1355 it received its charter as a studium generale from Charles IV. After the year 1373 the school gradually dwindled, although it did not become altogether extinct until about the year 1470. The university of

Rome (which is to be carefully distinguished from the school attached to the Curia) owed its foundation (1303) to Boniface VIII., and was especially designed by that pontiff for the benefit of the poor foreign students sojourning in the capital. It originally included all the faculties; but in 1318 John XXII. decreed that it should possess the power of conferring degrees only in the canon and civil law. The university maintained its existence throughout the period of the residence of the popes of Avignon, and under the patronage of Leo X. could boast in 1514 of no less than eighty professors. This imposing array would seem, however, to be but a

fallacious test of the prosperity of the academic community, for it is stated that many of the professors, owing to the imperfect manner in which they were protected in their privileges, were in the receipt of such insufficient fees that they were compelled to combine other employments with that of lecturing in order to support themselves. An appeal addressed to Leo X. in the year 1513 represents the number of students as so small as to be sometimes exceeded by that of the lecturers (“ut quandoque plures sint qui legant quam qui audiant”). Scarcely any of the universities in Italy in the 14th century

attracted a larger concourse than that of Perugia, where the study chiefly cultivated was that of the civil law. The university received its charter as a studium generale from Clement V. in the year 1308, but had already in 1306 been formally recognized by the civic authorities, by whom it was commended to the special care and protection of the podestà. In common with the rest of the Italian universities, it suffered severely from the great plague of 1348–49; but in 1355 it received new privileges from the emperor, and in 1362 its first college, dedicated to Gregory the Great, was founded by the bishop of Perugia. The university of

Treviso, which received its charter from Frederick the Fair in 1318, was of little celebrity and but short duration. The circumstances of the rise of the university of Florence are unknown, but the earliest evidence of academic instruction belongs to the year 1320. The dispersion of the university of Bologna, in the March and April of the following year, afforded a favourable opportunity for the creation of a studium generale, but the necessary measures were taken somewhat tardily, and in the meantime the greater number of the Bolognese students had betaken themselves to Siena, where for the space of three years twenty-two professors gathered round them a body of enthusiastic students. Eventually the majority returned to Bologna, and when in 1338 that city was placed under an interdict by Benedict XII. another exodus of students repaired to Pisa, which in 1343 received from Clement VI. its charter as a studium generale. Closed in 1406, Pisa, aided by the powerful intervention of Lorenzo de' Medici, reopened in 1473, to undergo, however, a long series of vicissitudes which at last found a termination in 1850, when its fortunes were placed on a more stable basis, and it gradually acquired the reputation of ranking among the foremost universities of a reunited Italy. The charter of foundation for Florence, on the other hand, was not granted until May 31, 1349, when Clement VI. decreed that there should be instituted a studium generale in theology, jurisprudence, medicine and every other recognized faculty of learning, the teachers to be professors who had obtained the degree of doctor or master either at Bologna or Paris, or “some other studium generale of celebrity.” On the 2nd of January 1364 the university also obtained the grant of imperial privileges from Charles IV. On 14th February 1388 it adopted a body of statutes which are still extant, and afford an interesting study in connexion with the university history of the period. The university now entered upon that brilliant period in its history which was destined to so summary an extinction. “It is almost touching,” says Denifle, “to note how untiringly Florence exerted herself at this period to attract as teachers to her schools the great masters of the sciences and learning.” In the year 1472, however, it was decided that Florence was not a convenient seat for a university, and its students joined the throngs which repaired to the reopened halls of Pisa. A special interest

attaches to the rise of the university of Siena, as that of one which had made good its position prior to becoming recognized either by emperor or pope. Its beginning dates from about the year 1241, but its charter was first granted by the emperor Charles IV., at the petition of the citizens, in the year 1357. It was founded as a studium generale in jurisprudence, the arts and medicine. The imperial charter was confirmed by Gregory XII. in 1408, and the various bulls relating to the university which he subsequently issued afford a good illustration of the conditions of academic