Bologna
A city of northern Italy whose law schools made it, with Paris, one of the two models that later universities copied.
Bologna lies at the foot of the Apennines on the road from the Po plain to Tuscany. The emperor Frederick I’s law of 1158 protecting scholars who travel for study does not name it, but Dana C. Munro, who translated the law, reports that it is generally taken to have been made for Bologna and may have been obtained by its doctors of law (Frederick I, Authentica Habita Munro’s introductory note, p. 2). He adds that most Italian universities, and some in France and Spain, later copied Bologna as those of the north copied Paris (Frederick I, Authentica Habita Munro’s note to the table of contents, p. 1).
What happened here
- about 1150 to 1215, estimated dateThe Schools Become Universities
The schools of twelfth-century Paris grow into a self-governing body of masters and students, and an emperor’s law protects travelling scholars. Abelard, Gratian and Peter Lombard supply a method and books; kings and popes grant privileges.
- 22 December 1216, firm dateDominic Founds the Order of Preachers
Dominic, a Spanish canon who had spent nearly ten years preaching against heresy in southern France, gathers a community at Toulouse. Pope Honorius III confirms it in December 1216, and within five years its friars are in Paris, Bologna and Spain.