Origin and Early Organization
Like the other early medieval universities (Bologna, Oxford, Salamanca, Cambridge, Padua), the University of Paris was already well established before it received a specific foundation act from the Church in 1200. The earliest historical reference to the university as such is found in Matthew of Paris's reference to his own teacher's study (an abbot of St. Albans) and his acceptance into "the fellowship of the elect Masters" at the university of Paris in about 1170. Additionally, it is known that Pope Innocent III, having assumed the papacy at the age of 37, had completed his studies at the University of Paris by 1182 at the age of 21. It grew up in the latter part of the twelfth century around the Notre Dame Cathedral as a corporation similar to other medieval corporations, such as guilds of merchants or artisans. The medieval Latin term universitas had the more general meaning of a guild. The university of Paris was known as a universitas magistrorum et scholarium (a guild of masters and scholars). Later universities such as the Charles University in Prague or the University of Heidelberg had different origins.
The university had four faculties: Arts, Medicine, Law, and Theology. The Faculty of Arts was the lowest in rank, but also the largest as students had to graduate there to be admitted to one of the higher faculties. The students were divided into four nationes according to language or regional origin: France, Normandy, Picardy, and England. The last came to be known as the Alemannian (German) nation. Recruitment to each nation was wider than the names might imply: the English-German nation included students from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.
The faculty and nation system of the University of Paris (along with that of the University of Bologna) became the model for all later medieval universities. Under the governance of the Church, students wore robes and shaved the tops of their heads in tonsure, to signify they were under the protection of the church. Students operated according to the rules and laws of the Church and were not subject to the king's laws or courts. This presented ongoing problems of students abusing the laws of the city, which had no direct recourse for justice and had to appeal to Church courts. Students were often very young, entering the school at age 13 or 14 and staying for 6 to 12 years.
Read more about this topic: University Of Paris
Famous quotes containing the words origin, early and/or organization:
“Our theism is the purification of the human mind. Man can paint, or make, or think nothing but man. He believes that the great material elements had their origin from his thought.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall
But they are gone to early death, who late in school
Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl.”
—Richard Eberhart (b. 1904)
“... every womans organization recognizes that reformers are far more common than feminists, that the passion to look after your fellow man, and especially woman, to do good to her in your way is far more common than the desire to put into every ones hand the power to look after themselves.”
—Crystal Eastman (18811928)