in the 1200s, when universities were formed at Naples and Padua (along with
smaller ones) in Italy; at Salamanca and Valladolid (again with smaller ones)
in Spain; Cambridge in England; and Toulouse, Angers, and Orléans in France
itself. Many of the smaller schools specializing in law did not even have arts
faculties (Cobban, 1988: 3). As far as philosophy is concerned, the other
universities acted at best as feeders for higher studies at Paris.
After 1300, the situation began to change. In Figures 9.5 and 9.6 we see
the dispersion of intellectual life to many places, both inside and outside the
universities. Especially in the late 1300s and the 1400s, we find independent
mystics in Germany and the Netherlands, Humanists in Italy, Jews in southern
France and Italy, and Averroists in the medical and legal faculties in Italy, where
philosophy had previously shown little penetration; nominalists were promi-
nent in the universities in Germany. After 1350 Oxford no longer stood out,
and the Paris networks were fading.
The decline of abstract philosophy was not due to the decline of the
university itself. On the contrary, this was a period of accelerating growth of
the university system as a whole (see Table 9.1). By the end of the 1200s, there
were 18 universities, 12 of them major in size and importance. By 1400 there
were 34 universities, 18 of them major; by 1500 there were 56. Even more
universities were founded, but many of them failed. The failure rate went up
during these centuries; between 1300 and 1500, about half of all university
foundations were failures.^19 The market for educational credentials was ex-
panding explosively, but at the same time flooding the market, raising the risk
of failure and of losing former prestige.
More universities existed, but they were becoming smaller. Paris at its
height around 1280–1300 had some 6,000 to 7,000 students; the number
began falling in the 1300s and dropped below 3,000 by 1450. Bologna rivaled
Paris’s size in the early 1200s but fell behind thereafter. Oxford may have had
a maximum of 3,000 students in the 1200s; there were an estimated 1,500 in
1315 and fewer than 1,000 in 1438; by 1500–1510 the yearly average was
down to 124. Toulouse may have had 2,000 students at its height; this fell to
1,380 teachers and students in 1387 and below 1,000 in the 1400s. Avignon
(founded in 1303) and Orléans had 800 to 1,000 students, mainly in law, in
the 1390s; these numbers fell off drastically in the following century. The
smaller French and Italian universities never had more than a few hundred
students at their height, and they often closed for lack of students.
The proliferation of universities was especially rapid in Italy and Spain, and
here the failure rates were highest. Italy had an overwhelming 80 percent failure
rate in the 1300s and 1400s. France too experienced a considerable number
of foundings; it reached a failure rate of at least 78 percent in the 1400s.
Expansion in Germany and in central and far northern Europe was more suc-
516 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths