The First Universities: Studium Generale and the Origins of University Education in Europe

by Olaf Pedersen, Richard North (Translator)

This is a general study of the development of higher education in Europe from antiquity until the end of the Middle Ages. It shows how the slender traditions of ancient learning, kept alive in the monastic and cathedral schools, were enriched by an enormous influx of knowledge from the Islamic world and how in consequence the schools developed into universities. Special attention is paid to early intellectual history and the scientific disciplines, and to the everyday life of the students and their teachers.

Genres: History, Education, Medieval History, Medieval

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I almost gave this book five stars. It's a fun, lively overview of how concepts of education grew and developed, from Mesopotamian institutions for scribal training to the large and established universities in place by the 14th and 15th centuries.

Pederson recounts how early educational endeavors to produce scribes and administrators (in Mesopotamia) and early educational endeavors to utilize knowledge to attain a higher spiritual plane (the Pythagoreans) really came together for the first time in Greek pedagogy, particularly Plato's Academy. For Plato, training the body and the mind in all disciplines would improve the individual, but also, because Plato envisioned universal education, civic society as a whole. This was in part carried over to Rome, but the rhetorical and legal aspects were given primacy of place.

Pederson then provides a fairly conventional (but nicely done) account of early medieval education: late Roman fragmentation, drops in literacy, but the maintenance of educational culture (inspired particularly by Augustine) by men like Cassidorus & Boethius and the monks of the British Isles. A brief intellectual renaissance under the Carolingians paved the way so that when a demographic revival occurred about 200 years later, the groundwork and the texts were waiting. Pederson also makes the good point, that I had never thought of before, that Carolingian patronage + Cluniac monastic reforms tended to push the centers of education away from monasteries, where they had resided for centuries, and into cathedral chapters in newly growing medieval cities.

Thus as populations grew and agricultural innovations produced enough food to support them, students were increasingly drawn to masters teachings in cathedrals and the cities that had the resources to support them in large numbers. As numbers grow, schools tended to specialized - Salerno in medicine, Bologna in law, Paris in theology - and students and teachers increasingly reached around for some form of legal protection. Utilizing legal knowledge and the loose model of the guilds in the towns around them, students and teachers each formed their own associations that were increasingly able (predominately through use or threats of strikes) to solidify themselves as legal entities that would eventually get the name "university." Once established, there was a long period of power struggles, most often between the university and the local bishop & chancellor, but also between the university and the papacy and the university and the newly-formed mendicant orders. Pederson then closes out the book with a few chapters on student life and general trends in the curriculum.

This could all be deeply, deeply boring (there's some talk of university administrative structures) but instead it's full of curiosity about how people think, and full of wonderful little anecdotes of university life. Hazing apparently consisted of - at least on occasion - making the new student throw a lavish banquet for everyone else, and then making them sing while everyone threw dirt at them. Soon after getting going, Oxford apparently could boast, at minimum, 199 institutions where students could buy beer. Students about to take their oral exams had to sign an oath that if they failed they wouldn't respond with sarcastic or derogatory remarks to their examiners). It's such a lively, well-written book. I found myself laughing out loud a couple of times, which is not a common occurrence when reading academic works. My only slight qualm is that the first third of the book, which deals with Mesopotamia through the 12th century, has a habit of being a little anachronistic. Ideas from 150 years later are pulled back and used as one explanation for much earlier things. That only happens occasionally, and it never really interferes with the argument of the book. On the whole, it's a great read.

Special kudos to Richard North as well, who did such an nice translation.

[Tasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for my Comparative International Education class at the University of Kentucky. It's an eye-opening look at the earliest forms of higher education that evolved in Europe (i.e. Cambridge, Oxford, and the University of Paris), and it explores the mathematical and scientific developments in the Arab world. This book follows the rise of higher learning through the 14th century.

[Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the English translation, and this is an incredibly well written overview of the history of universities from the beginning. The author does a fine job of examining Classical roots, the influence of Germanic tribes, and even teachings from the Middle East and their impact on the rise of the university in Europe.

[Deniz]

perfect

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this. Read it for school. Author tends to name drop a sif you know who everyone is. It is dense with names.

[Adam Balshan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars [Education]
(W: 2.81, U: 3.23, T: 3.37)
Exact rating: 3.14