UNIVERSITIES. The mediaeval Latin term universitas was originally employed to denote any community or corpora tion. When used in its modern sense of a body devoted to learn ing and education, it required the addition of other words, such as snagistrorum et scholarium. In the course of time, probably towards the latter part of the 14th century, the term began to be used by itself, with the exclusive meaning of a lawfully recog nized community of teachers and scholars. But the more ancient and customary designation of such communities in mediaeval times (regarded as places of instruction) was studium (and sull sequently studium generale), a term implying a centre of in struction for all.
A university often had a vigorous virtual existence long before it obtained that legal recognition which entitled it, technically, to take rank as a stadium generale.
The university appears to have started as a scholastic gild—a spontaneous combination, that is to say, of teachers or scholars, or of both combined, and formed, probably, on the analogy of the trades gilds, and the gilds of aliens in foreign cities, which, in the course of the t3th and 14th centuries, sprang up in most of the great European centres. The design, in the first instance, was little more than that of securing mutual protection. And so the university, composed as it was to a great extent of students from foreign countries, was a combination formed for the protection of its members from the extortion of the townsmen and the other annoyances incident in mediaeval times to residence in a foreign State.
Meaning of "Studium Generale."—In the north of Europe licences to teach were granted by the chancellor scholasticus, or some other officer of a cathedral church; in the south it is prob able that the guilds of masters (when these came to be formed) were at first free to grant their own licences, without any eccle siastical or other supervision. Gradually, however, towards the
end of the i 2th century, a few great schools claimed, from the excellence of their teaching, to be of more than merely local importance. Practically, a doctor of Paris or Bologna would be allowed to teach anywhere; and those great schools began to be known as studia generalia, i.e., places resorted to by scholars from all parts. Eventually the term came to have a more definite and technical signification. The emperor Frederick II. set the example of attempting to confer, by an authoritative bull, upon his new school at Naples the prestige which the earlier studia had acquired by reputation and general consent. In 1229 Gregory IX. did the same for Toulouse, and in 1233 added to its original privileges a bull by which anyone who had been admitted to the doctorate or mastership in that university should have the right to teach anywhere without further examination. Other studia generalia were subsequently founded by papal or imperial bulls; and in 1292 even the oldest universities, Paris and Bologna, found it desirable to obtain similar bulls from Nicolas IV. From this time the notion began to prevail among the jurists that the essence of the studium generale was the privilege of conferring the ius ubicunque docendi, and that no new studium could acquire that position without a papal or imperial bull. There were, however, a few studia generalia (e.g., Oxford), whose position was too well established to be seriously questioned, although they had never obtained such a bull ; these were held to be studia generalia ex consuetudine. A few Spanish universities founded by royal char ter were held to be studia generalia respectu regni.