UNIVERSITIES
. In the Middle Ages, the term for a university was studium or studium generale, with the
word universitas referring to the institutional or corporate shell enclosing and regulating
the communities of masters and students. The most important university in medieval
France was that of Paris, whose origins can be found in the 12th century; also of 12th-
century origin was the medical school of Montpellier. By the end of the 15th century,
however, the model of these early universities had inspired the foundation of many
universities throughout France.
In the late 11th century, the school of William of Champeaux had been located in
Paris. After William left the city for the nearby community of Saint-Victor, his absence
permitted his former student Peter Abélard to establish his own school outside the city on
Mont-Sainte-Geneviève; later, in the 1130s, when Abélard again resumed teaching after
the interruption prompted by his castration and entry into monastic life, it was again to
Mont-Sainte-Geneviève that he returned. The attractions of Paris were several: it was
well provided with food and wine; it was the capital of the king of France; there were
numerous regional schools that could provide students; and the bishop and cathedral
chapter generally failed to exercise much control over teaching in the city.
By the time Abélard left Paris for the last time, in 1141, the city was the center of a
considerable community of masters and students: sources regarding the schools of Paris
in the early 1140s mention not only Abélard but Albéric de Monte, Robert of Melun,
Peter Helias, Adam du Petit-Pont, Gilbert of Poitiers, Thierry of Chartres, and Peter
Lombard. Other towns may have boasted masters who were worthy of this company, but
none could match the concentration of talent that Paris offered an aspiring student.
Students naturally came in large numbers and often from considerable distances; how
many there were is impossible to say with any certainty, but the rapid settlement of the
Left Bank—the area between the cathedral and Mont-Sainte-Geneviéve where scholars
settled in large numbers—suggests that the academic community may have numbered
3,000 or 4,000 by the end of the 12th century. Whatever the precise number, by 1200
Paris was the leading center in Europe for the study of the Liberal Arts and theology.
The texture of the intellectual community, however, was also changing by the 1140s,
John of Salisbury recalled having come to Paris as a young man in the 1130s and hearing
Abélard lecture, but students in the 1140s were studying with John, a student himself who
used the money he earned to finance his own studies. The growing size of the academic
community perhaps contributes to the fact that we know the names of comparatively few
masters for the second half of the 12th century; it must have been harder to stand out
from the crowd. But it was also in this period that one sees the first steps toward defining
the legal context in which the masters and students operated.
The first issue to arise was the licentia docendi, or license to teach. Pope Alexander
III, in 1166–67 and later in conjunction with the Third Lateran Council (1179), barred the
chancellor of Paris from exacting a fee for the right to teach at Paris. The prohibition
apparently was not entirely effective, for it had to be repeated in the early 13th century.
At that time, Pope Innocent III and then his legate (and Paris master) Robert de Courçon
assigned the right to assess the qualifications of candidates for the license to teach to the
masters themselves. This provision of Courçon’s statutes, moreover, confirmed the
The Encyclopedia 1775