expansion it includes all branches of metaphysical, linguistic, mathematical, historical, scientific, and other studies, which may claim the dignity of independent departments. Besides the literary division into faculties there was a national division, with provincial subdivisions. The students of Paris were divided into the four nations of France, Picardy (including the Netherlands), Normandy, and England (which in 1430 gave place to Germany). They had distinct suffrages in the affairs of the university. In Bologna, Padua, and Vercelli there were four" universitates," composed of different nationalities—Italians, English, Provençals, and Germans. The provincial division is still kept up in the Swedish universities of Upsala and Lund. A university formed a republic of letters, a state within the state, a church within the church. It had an independent government and jurisdiction, large endowments and privileges, granted by popes, kings, cities, and individuals. An elective rector or chancellor stood at the head of the whole corporation, a dean at the head of each faculty, and each nation had its procurator; these officers constituted the governing and executive body. The academic senate embraced the ordinary professors of all the faculties and was the legislative body. Each faculty granted the license to teach, and conferred the academic degrees of bachelor, licentiate (master), and doctor. These degrees looked originally to public teaching, and marked as many steps in the promotion to this office. In law, there were doctors of civil law, and doctors of canon law. The doctorate of divinity required nine years of preparation, but is now usually bestowed honoris causa for actual services rendered to sacred learning. The academic degrees conveyed important rights and privileges, and were carefully guarded and highly esteemed. This is still the case in all the leading universities of Europe. In our country the lavish bestowal of diplomas by several hundred colleges, the feeblest as well as the strongest, has made those dignities as numerous and as cheap as leaves in Vallombrosa. There are more doctors of divinity in the State, if not in the city of New York alone, than in the whole German Empire, which is emphatically the land of learning. The only present remedy for this abuse is the indication of the source from which the degree is derived. The stronger an institution, the greater should be the discrimination and care in the distribution of these honors. Italy, France, and England took the lead in the history of the universities. Germany was behind them till the period of the Reformation; but the Hohenstaufen emperors-Frederick Barbarossa, and Frederick II.-began the university legislation and granted the first charters to Italian universities, which took the lead, especially in law and medicine. They were followed by Paris and Oxford. In modern times the German universities are the chief nurseries of progressive learning, and attract students from all parts of the world. The attendance of students in the Middle Ages was larger. than in modern times, because there were fewer universities and libraries. This scarcity made oral instruction all the more valuable. If one desired to be taught by Abelard or Thomas Aquinas, he must go to Paris. We read that Bologna had at one time as many as 10,000, Paris 25,000, and Oxford 30,000 scholars. Abelard lectured before 3,000 hearers. In like manner the scarcity of preaching and good preachers increased the number of hearers. Berthold of Regensburg, a Franciscan monk and revival preacher in the middle of the thirteenth century, is reported to have preached at times to an audience of 60,000.1 These figures are probably exaggerated, but not impossible. The time for study was more extended. Men in mature age, even priests, canons, and professors, often turned students for a season. The line between teachers and learners was not closely drawn, and both were included in the name of scholar or student (scholaris or scholasticus). The professors were called Doctor, Magister, Dominus. They 1 The largest number of students for 1887 was 5,357 in Berlin, 4,893 in Vienna, 3,231 in Leipzig, 3,176 in Munich. The number of professors (ordinary, extraordinary, and Privatdocenten) for the same year was 296 in Berlin, 301 in Vienna, 180 in Leipzig, 165 in Munich, 131 in Breslau, 121 in Göttingen, 110 in Prague. The largest number of Italian students in 1887 was in the University of Naples and reached 4,083. had no regular salary, and lived on lecture fees or private means or charitable funds. Some were supported from the royal purse or private endowments. Most of them were monks or ecclesiastics, and had no families to support. They had no common building, and taught wherever it was most convenient, in colleges, in convents, in public halls or private rooms. University buildings, libraries, antiquarian and artistic collections were of slow growth, and the effects of successful teaching. With us colleges often begin with brick and mortar, and have to wait for teachers and students. Brain produces brick, but brick will not produce brain. A papal bull was usually required for a university.1 Every doctor and public teacher of theology was sworn to defend the Scriptures and the faith of the holy Roman Catholic Church. Luther took that oath. Paris, Louvain, and Cologne condemned him as a heretic. Yet from the universities proceeded, in spite of papal prohibitions and excommunications, the intellectual and ecclesiastical revolutions of modern times. The last medieval universityWittenberg-became the first Protestant university. Heidelberg, Leipzig, Tübingen, Oxford, and Cambridge, once among the chief nurseries of scholastic theology and Roman orthodoxy, have long since transferred their loyalty and zeal to a different creed. The oldest Scotch university-St. Andrews-founded for the defence of the Roman Catholic faith, became a bulwark of the Reformation, so that the phrase "to drink from St. Leonard's well" (one of the colleges of St. Andrews) was equivalent to imbibing the doctrines of Calvin. Almost every new school of theological thought, and every great ecclesiastical movement were born or nursed in some university. Salerno is the oldest university so called; it dates from the ninth century, but never acquired general influence, and was confined to the study of medicine. In 1231 it was constituted by the Emperor Frederick II. as the only school of medicine in the kingdom of Naples, but was subsequently overshadowed by 1 This medieval custom has long since ceased in Europe, but has been renewed in our country by Pope Leo XIII., in chartering the Catholic university in the city of Washington, which was dedicated November 13, 1889. the University of Naples, which had likewise a medical faculty. It has long since ceased to exist. The oldest surviving, and at the same time most important, universities of the Middle Ages are those of Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. universities, founded before They were Roman Cathsurvive, but have under The total number of medieval A.D. 1500, amounts to about sixty. olic in religion. Most of them still gone many changes. The universities which date from the last three centuries are chiefly Protestant, or purely scientific and literary. Germany heads the list with twenty-two universities, which include all the four or five faculties; France has probably as many, but some are incomplete as to the number of faculties; Italy has twenty-one; Spain, ten; Austria-Hungary, seven; Switzerland, six; Holland, five; Belgium, four; England, three; Scotland, four; Ireland, two; Sweden, two; Norway, one; Denmark, one; Portugal, one; Greece, one. The nine Russian universities are all of modern date, and profess the Greek religion; but Dorpat has a Lutheran faculty of theology, which is taught in the German language. Colleges are not to be confounded with universities, as is often the case in our country. They were originally charitable institutions for poor students, called "bursars" (bursier, hence the German Burschen), who lived together under the supervision of Canon Robert de Sorbon, chaplain and confessor of Louis IX., endowed such a monastic, beneficiary college in Paris (1274), which was called after him the Sorbonne (Sorbona)—a name often incorrectly given to the theological faculty or even to the whole University of Paris. masters. On the Continent, colleges or gymnasia are subordinate and preparatory to the university, and cannot confer degrees. In England, on the contrary, the colleges have absorbed the university, and constitute the university. In Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham the several colleges and halls have separate endowments, buildings, libraries, and corps of teachers, retain the dormitory system and instruction by masters and tutors or fellows, and enforce attendance upon the daily devotions in the chapel. The American college and university system is built on the Eng lish rather than the Continental model, but boldly ventures on all sorts of new experiments, some of which will fail, while others will succeed. II. THE UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA.1 Bologna (Bononia), a beautiful old city on the northern slope of the Apennines, which formerly belonged to the Papal States (from 1513 to 1860), but now to the United Kingdom of Italy, derives her fame chiefly from the university, which is the oldest in existence. Tradition traces its origin back to the reign of Theodosius II., in 425; but there is no evidence of its existence before the close of the eleventh or the beginning of the twelfth century, when Irnerius, a native of Bologna, discovered and expounded in that city the Civil Code of Justinian. He is called the Restorer and Expounder of Roman jurisprudence.2 He was in the service of the Emperor Henry V., as counsellor, between 1116 and 1118, and died before 1130.3 Shortly after him, Gratian, a Camalduensian monk, taught the canon law in the Convent of St. Felix in Bologna, and published in 1150 the famous Decretum Gratiani, which was adopted as a text-book in all universities. The Decretum-or, as he called it, "the Concordance of Discordant Canons," is a systematic and harmonistic collection of canons of ancient councils and papal decretals, based upon older collections, and explained by glosses. It forms the first part of the Corpus juris canonici, or catholic church law, which was gradually enlarged by synodical decrees and papal bulls to its present dimensions. Thus we find in Bologna before the middle of the twelfth cen 1 The best accounts of the University of Bologna during the Middle Ages, with special reference to the study of the Roman law, are given by Professor Fr. Carl von Savigny in the third volume of his great German work on the History of the Roman Law, pp. 159-272 (2d ed., 1834-1851, 7 vols.), and by Giacomo Cassani (formerly Professor of Canon Law in Bologna), in Dell'antico studio di Bologna e sua origine, Bologna, 1888. Much information may also be obtained from works on the canon law, and from the publications issued in commemoration of the eighth centenary of the university, which are mentioned in the appendix to this address. 2 "Scientiæ legalis illuminator 3 Von Savigny treats very fully of Irnerius in his Geschichte des römischen Rechts, Vol. IV. 9–67 (2d ed., 1850). |