With papal support Paris became the great trans-Alpine centre of orthodox theological teaching. Successive pontiffs, down to the great schism of 1378, cultivated friendly relations with the Uni versity, and systematically discouraged the formation of theo logical faculties at other centres. In 1231 Gregory IX., in the bull Parens Scientiarum, gave full recognition to the right of the several faculties to regulate and modify the constitution of the university. The fully-developed university was divided into four faculties— three "superior," viz., those of theology, canon law and medicine, and one "inferior," that of arts, which was divided into four "nations." These nations, which included both professors and scholars, were I) the French nation, composed, in addition to the native element, of Spaniards, Italians and Greeks; (2) the Picard nation, representing the students from the north-east and from the Netherlands; (3) the Norman nation; (4) the English nation, comprising, besides students from the provinces under English rule, those from England, Ireland, Scotland and Germany. The rector, in the first instance, was head of the faculty of arts, by whom he was elected. Eventually be became the head of the collective university, by the incorporation under him, first, of the students of the canon law and of medicine (which took place about the end of the 13th century), and, secondly, of the theologians, which took place about half a century later.
In the course of the 16th and 17th centuries this democratic constitution of the middle ages was largely superseded by the growth of a small oligarchy of officials. The tribunal of the uni versity—the rector, deans and proctors—came to occupy a some what similar position to the old "Hebdomadal Board" of heads of colleges at Oxford and the Caput at Cambridge. Moreover, the teaching functions of the university, or rather of the faculty of arts, owing chiefly to the absence of any endowment for the regents or teaching graduates, practically passed to the colleges. Almost as much as the English universities, Paris came to be virtually reduced to a federation of colleges, though the colleges were at Paris less independent of university authority, while the smaller colleges sent their members to receive instruction in the larger ones (colleges de plein exercice), which received large numbers of non-foundation members. This state of things lasted
till the French Revolution swept away the whole university system of the middle ages. It may be noted that the famous Sor bonne (see PARIS UNIVERSITY) was really the most celebrated college of Paris—founded by Robert de Sorbonne c. 1257—but as this college and the College of Navarre were the only college foundations which provided for students in theology, the close connection of the former with the faculty, and the use of its hall for the disputations of that body, led to the word Sorbonne be coming a popular term for the theological faculty of Paris.
In the 14th century the University of Paris had 4o colleges, governed either by secular or religious communities, and num bered among its students representatives of every country in Europe (Jourdain, Excursions historiques, c. xiv.). The university became known as the great school where theology was studied in its most scientific spirit; and the decisions of its great doctors upon those abstruse questions which absorbed so much of the highest intellectual activity of the middle ages were regarded as almost final. The popes themselves, as already stated, discouraged the creation of faculties of theology elsewhere. The apparent exceptions to this policy are easily explained : the four faculties of theology which they sanctioned in Italy—Pisa (1343), Florence (1349), Bologna (1362) and Padua (1363)—were designed to benefit the Italian monasteries, by saving the monks the expense and dangers of a long journey beyond the Alps; while that at Toulouse (1229) took its rise under circumstances entirely excep tional, 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.