Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/874

Rh Toulouse (1229) took its rise under circumstances entirely exceptional, being designed as a bulwark against the heresy of the Albigenses. The popes, on the other hand, favoured the creation of new faculties of law, and especially of the canon law, as the latter represented the source from which Rome derived her most warmly contested powers and prerogatives. The effects of this twofold policy were sufficiently intelligible: the withholding of each charter which it was sought to obtain for a new school of theology only served to augment the numbers that flocked to Paris; the bestowal of each new charter for a faculty of law served in like manner to divert a certain proportionate number from Bologna. These facts enable us to understand how it is that, in the 13th and 14th centuries, we find, even in France, a larger number of universities created after the model of Bologna than after that of Paris.

In their earliest stage, however, the importance of these new institutions was but imperfectly discerned alike by the civil and the ecclesiastical power, and the first four universities of Italy, after Bologna, rose into existence, like Bologna itself, without a charter from either pope or emperor. Of these the first were those of Reggio and Modena, both of which are to be found mentioned as schools of civil law before the close of the 12th century. The latter, throughout the 13th century, appears to have been resorted to by teachers of sufficient eminence to form a nourishing school, composed of students not only from the city itself, but also from a considerable distance. Both of them would seem to have been formed independently of Bologna, but the university of Vicenza was probably the outcome of a migration of the students from the former city, which took place in the year 1204. In the course of the century Vicenza attained to considerable prosperity; its students were divided into four nations, each with its own rector; and in 1264 it included in its professoriate teachers, not only of the civil law, but also of medicine, grammar, and dialectic. The university of Padua was founded in 1222 as the direct result of the migration of a considerable number of students from Bologna. Some writers, indeed, have inferred that the " studium " in the latter city was transferred in its entirety, but the continued residence of a certain proportion in Bologna is proved by the fact that two years later we find them appealing to Honorius III. in a dispute with the civic authorities. In the year 1228 the students of Padua were compelled by circumstances to transfer their residence to Vercelli, and the latter city guaranteed them, besides other privileges, the right to rent no less than five hundred lodging-houses at a fixed rental for a period of eight years. At first Padua was a school only of the civil and canon law; and during the oppressive tyranny of Ezzelin (1237-1260) the university maintained its existence with some difficulty. But in the latter part of the century it incorporated the faculties of grammar, rhetoric, and medicine, and became known as one of the most flourishing schools of Italy, and a great centre of the Dominicans, at that time among the most active promoters of learning.

The university of Naples was founded by the emperor Frederick II. in the year 1225, as a school of theology, jurisprudence, the arts, and medicine, his design being that his subjects in the kingdom of Naples should find in the capital adequate instruction in every branch of learning, and "not be compelled in the pursuit of knowledge to have recourse to foreign nations or to beg in other lands." In the year 1231, however, he decreed that the faculty of medicine should cease to exist, and that the study should be pursued nowhere in the kingdom but at Salerno. The university never attained to much eminence, and after the death of Frederick came for a time altogether to an end, but was restored 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 of 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, un less 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 Lom bard 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 " studiurn " 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 pro fessors 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, al though 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