ITALIAN UNIVERSITIES IN THE MIDDLE AGES Rise of University of Salerno.—The origins of the first European university—that of Salerno in Italy, which became known as a school of medicine as early as the 9th century—are uncertain. The most authoritative researches point to the conclu-. sion that the medical system of Salerno was originally an outcome of the Graeco-Roman tradition of the Old Roman world, and the Arabic medicine was not introduced till the highest fame of the Civitas Hippocratica was passing away. It may have been influ enced by the late survival of the Greek language in southern Italy, though this cannot be proved. In the first half of the 9th century the emperor at Constantinople sent to the Caliph Mamoun at Baghdad a considerable collection of Greek manuscripts, which seems to have given the earliest impulse to the study of the Hel lenic pagan literature by the Saracens. The original texts were translated into Arabic by Syrian Christians, and these versions were, in turn, rendered into Latin for the use of teachers in the West. Of the existence of such versions we have evidence, accord ing to Jourdain, long prior to the time when Constantine the African (d. 1087) began to deliver his lectures on the science at Salerno. Under his teaching the fame of Salerno as a medical school became diffused all over Europe; it was distinguished also by its catholic spirit, and, at a time when Jews were the objectof religious persecution throughout Europe, members of this na tionality were to be found both as teachers and learners at Salerno. In 1231 it was constituted by the emperor Frederick II. the only school of medicine in the kingdom of Naples.
great revival of legal studies which took place at Bologna about the year i000 had also been preceded by a corresponding activity elsewhere—at Pavia by a famous school of Lombard law, and at Ravenna by a yet more important school of Roman law. And in Bologna itself we have evidence that the Digest was known and studied before the time of Irnerius 30), a certain Pepo being named as lecturing on the text about the year 1076. The secular character of this new study, and its close connection with the claims and prerogatives of the Western emperor, aroused papal suspicion, and for a time Bologna and its civilians were regarded by the Church with distrust. But 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 luris Civilis. They constituted, in fact, the main basis of those
new pretensions asserted by the• papacy in the course of the 12th and 13th centuries. It was necessary, accordingly, that the Decretuni should be known and studied beyond the walls of the monastery or the episcopal palace. Such a centre of instruction was in Bologna, which became recognized as the chief school of civil and canon law. But the statement, that university degrees were instituted there as early as the pontificate of Eugenius III. (1145-53), rests on no good authority. The students found their first real protector in the emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Find ing 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 (Nov. 1158). These privileges were embodied in the celebrated Authentica, Habita, in the Corpus luris Civilis of the empire (bk_ iv. tit. 13), and were eventually extended to all the other universities of Italy.
Nevertheless Bologna did not possess a university so early as I158. 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. These were originally only two in number, the Ultramontani and the Citramontani, and arose out of 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. Originally, they did not include the native student element, and were com posed exclusively of students in law. Denifle thinks that the "uni versities" at Bologna were at one time certainly more than four in number, and we know that the Italian students alone were sub divided 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 respec tively of Italians, English, Provencals and Germans; at Padua there were similar divisions into Italians, French (i.e., Francigenae, comprising both English and Normans), Provencals (including Spaniards and Catalans). According to Odofred, in the time of the eminent jurist Azo, who lectured at Bologna about 1200, the number of the students there amounted to some io,000, of whom the majority were foreigners. It seems, therefore, reasonable to conclude that the number of these confederations of students (societates scholarium) at Bologna was yet greater.