Latest / The Story of Italy: Rome, Renaissance, and the Birth of Modern Europe — Fexingo History / The University of Bologna: Europe's First University
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the big political and military stories of Italian history, but today I want to dive into something a bit different — the birth of the university. Specifically, the University of Bologna, which is widely considered the oldest continuously operating university in the world. Luna: Oh, I've heard of Bologna being old, but oldest? That's a bold claim. Lucas: It is, and it's contested by a few others — like the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Morocco, which was founded as a mosque school earlier — but Bologna is the first in the Western sense of a degree-granting institution. It started taking shape around the late 11th century, and by the 12th, it was a full-blown studium generale, attracting students from all over Europe. Luna: What made Bologna so special that it became the model? Lucas: A big part of it was law. Bologna sat at the crossroads of Northern Italy, and it had a strong tradition of legal studies. Around 1088, a man named Irnerius — sometimes called the 'Lantern of the Law' — began teaching Roman law there. He didn't just teach from summaries; he went back to the original texts of the Corpus Iuris Civilis, the great compilation of Roman law ordered by Emperor Justinian in the 6th century. Lucas: Irnerius's approach was revolutionary. He applied a rigorous, analytical method to these ancient texts, treating them as a coherent system that could be studied and applied. His school attracted students who wanted to become judges, notaries, or advisors to princes and cities. And soon, other teachers joined him, specializing in canon law — the law of the Church. Luna: Canon law — that's the Church's legal system, right? Lucas: Exactly. And the key figure there was Gratian, a monk who around 1140 compiled the Decretum Gratiani, a massive collection of papal decrees, Church councils, and patristic writings, organized into a coherent legal framework. It became the standard textbook for canon law across Europe. Luna: So you've got two legal traditions being taught side by side — Roman and canon law. That must have been powerful. Lucas: Incredibly powerful. Bologna became the place to go if you wanted a career in law. But what's really unique about Bologna is how the university was organized. Unlike later universities, which were run by the faculty, Bologna was a student-run university. Luna: Wait, the students ran it? How did that work? Lucas: The students — who were mostly older, often already in their twenties or thirties, and from wealthy families — formed guilds called universitates. They hired the professors, set their salaries, and even fined them if they didn't teach properly or if they skipped class. They had real power. The professors were employees of the students, essentially. Lucas: Of course, this system only worked because the students had leverage. They could threaten to leave Bologna and take their tuition money elsewhere. And they did, sometimes forming breakaway universities, like the one in Padua in 1222. Luna: So the students had the ultimate bargaining chip: 'Pay us better or we'll start our own university.' Lucas: Exactly. And the city of Bologna was very aware of the economic benefits of having a university. So they often sided with the students against the professors. The professors, for their part, were well-paid and enjoyed high status, so they put up with it. Lucas: Another important milestone came in 1158, when the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa issued a decree called the Authentica Habita. This granted special privileges to scholars — they could be tried only by their own university courts, not by city authorities. That protection made Bologna even more attractive. Luna: So the emperor was basically saying, 'You're under my protection, not the city's.' That's a big deal. Lucas: It was huge. It established the principle of academic freedom, at least in a medieval sense. The university became a kind of independent jurisdiction. And this model spread: by the 13th century, universities modeled on Bologna were springing up in Padua, Naples, Siena, and elsewhere. Lucas: Now, Bologna wasn't just about law. It had faculties of arts, medicine, and theology as well, but law was the crown jewel. And the teaching method was the lecture — literally a 'reading' of a text. The professor would read a passage from a legal text, then gloss it, that is, explain it line by line, and then raise questions for debate. Luna: So it was like a guided close reading, but with a lot of arguing. Lucas: Exactly. And the students would take notes and memorize the glosses. Exams were oral and public, and if you passed, you earned a licentia docendi, a license to teach. But most graduates didn't become professors; they went into practice as lawyers, judges, or administrators. Luna: Were there any famous students from Bologna? I'm thinking Dante, maybe? Lucas: Good guess. Dante Alighieri is said to have studied at Bologna for a time, though it's not certain. Another famous figure is Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who clashed with Henry II — he studied canon law at Bologna in the 1140s. And Petrarch, the poet, also studied law there, though he famously hated it and called it 'a trade of lying and selling words.' Luna: Ha! So even back then, there were students who felt they were learning useless stuff. Lucas: Absolutely. But the system worked. Bologna's law school produced generations of jurists who shaped the legal systems of Europe. The revival of Roman law, in particular, had a profound impact on the development of civil law codes across the continent. Lucas: And the university itself became a model for others. The University of Paris, which was the other great medieval university, followed a different model — it was run by the faculty, not the students. But Bologna's student-run model was adopted by many Italian universities and some elsewhere. Luna: So in a way, the University of Bologna set the template for higher education in Europe, even if not every place copied it exactly. Lucas: Exactly. And it's still going strong today, with over 80,000 students. It's a living link to the Middle Ages. I think it's remarkable that an institution founded nearly a thousand years ago by a bunch of students and teachers has lasted through wars, plagues, and revolutions. Luna: It makes you wonder what universities today will look like in another thousand years. Lucas: That's a great question. But for now, we can appreciate that Bologna's experiment in shared governance and academic freedom was a true Renaissance — or actually, pre-Renaissance — innovation that changed the world.