University of Bologna (1088): The Oldest University in Europe

The University of Bologna in northern Italy is generally recognised as the oldest university in continuous existence in the Western world. Its traditional founding date is 1088, when teachers of Roman law were drawing students to the city, although it took shape as an organised university during the twelfth century. Bologna created a new kind of institution, run by self-governing guilds of scholars, that became the model for universities across Europe.

Background: law and the revival of learning

In the eleventh century Western Europe was growing more prosperous and more complex. Towns expanded, trade increased and both rulers and the Church needed people trained to draft documents, settle disputes and argue cases.

Bologna, on important roads between northern and central Italy, was well placed to meet this need. Schools of the liberal arts and of notaries already existed there. The decisive change came with the renewed study of Roman law, especially the Digest, a large collection of legal opinions compiled under the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century and little known in the West for centuries.

Irnerius and the glossators

The figure most associated with Bologna’s rise is Irnerius (c. 1050-after 1125), a teacher who lectured on the full body of Justinian’s law, the Corpus Juris Civilis. Later tradition called him the “lamp of the law”. He and his followers explained the texts line by line, writing short notes called glosses between the lines and in the margins.

These teachers, the glossators, made Bologna famous. In the mid-twelfth century four of Irnerius’s successors, known as the Four Doctors (Bulgarus, Martinus, Jacobus and Hugo), advised the Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa on his imperial rights at the Diet of Roncaglia in 1158. Their work reached its peak with the Glossa ordinaria of Accursius, compiled in the first half of the thirteenth century, which became the standard commentary on Roman law.

Bologna also became the centre of canon law, the law of the Church. Around 1140 a teacher named Gratian compiled the Decretum, a massive collection that tried to reconcile thousands of conflicting church rules. It remained the basic textbook of canon law for centuries.

A university run by students

In the Middle Ages the Latin word universitas simply meant a corporation or guild. At Bologna, the students formed such guilds to protect themselves. Many were mature men from distant lands who had no rights as citizens of Bologna and could be exploited by landlords or local courts.

The students organised themselves by “nations”, according to their origins. By the thirteenth century these were grouped into two universities of law students: the Citramontani, from Italy, and the Ultramontani, from beyond the Alps. Each elected a rector. The student universities set rents for lodgings, negotiated with the city and, remarkably, controlled teachers’ conduct. Statutes allowed students to fine professors who started late, skipped difficult passages or left the city without permission.

Teachers formed their own colleges, which controlled examinations and the award of degrees. In 1219 Pope Honorius III gave the archdeacon of Bologna the right to grant the licence to teach, placing degrees under church authority.

The students’ strongest weapon was the threat to leave. Groups of scholars sometimes departed in protest and set up schools elsewhere. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 by students and teachers who left Bologna.

How teaching worked

Teaching at medieval Bologna centred on the lecture, in which a doctor read a legal text aloud and explained it passage by passage, with references to related texts and earlier glosses. Books were expensive, so students often rented sections of approved textbooks, called peciae, from licensed stationers and copied them by hand.

Students also took part in disputations, formal debates in which a legal problem was argued from both sides before the teacher gave a ruling. A full course in civil law could take six to eight years or more. The final examination was an expensive affair, ending with a public ceremony in which the new doctor received a book, a ring and a cap, symbols still echoed in some academic traditions today.

Imperial protection

The most important early privilege linked to Bologna is the Authentica Habita, a law issued by Frederick Barbarossa in the 1150s, probably in 1155 or 1158. It placed travelling scholars under imperial protection, guaranteed their safe passage and allowed them to be judged by their teachers or the bishop rather than by local courts. It is often seen as a founding charter of academic freedom in Europe.

Growth and fame

By the thirteenth century Bologna attracted students from all over Christian Europe, including Germany, France, England, Spain and Poland. Modern estimates of student numbers vary widely and are uncertain, but the city was clearly one of the largest centres of learning of its day. Universities of medicine and the arts developed alongside the law schools, and a theology faculty was approved by Pope Innocent VI in 1364.

Famous people who studied at Bologna include the poet Petrarch, who studied law there in the 1320s, and Nicolaus Copernicus, who studied canon law there in the 1490s. Bologna was also unusual in allowing a few women to study and, later, to teach. The physicist Laura Bassi became a professor there in 1732.

Key people

Irnerius (c. 1050-after 1125) was the pioneering teacher of Roman law whose lectures are traditionally linked with the university’s beginnings.

Gratian (twelfth century) compiled the Decretum around 1140, laying the foundation of canon law as an academic subject.

Frederick I Barbarossa (c. 1122-1190), Holy Roman Emperor, granted the Authentica Habita protecting scholars.

Accursius (c. 1182-1263) produced the Glossa ordinaria, the standard commentary on Roman law.

Legacy

Bologna’s model of a self-governing community of scholars spread across Europe. Southern European universities such as Padua often followed Bologna’s student-run pattern, while the University of Paris and the University of Oxford developed a model controlled by masters. The degrees, faculties and academic ceremonies of modern universities descend from these medieval institutions.

Bologna’s lawyers also had a lasting influence on European law. Roman law, as taught there, shaped legal systems across the continent. Like the scholars who translated Arabic learning in Toledo, Bologna’s teachers helped bring ancient knowledge back into European life.

In 1988 university rectors gathered in Bologna to sign the Magna Charta Universitatum, a declaration of academic freedom, and the Bologna Declaration of 1999 gave its name to the Bologna Process, which aligns university degrees across Europe.

Timeline

• c. 1088: Traditional founding date; Irnerius and others teach Roman law in Bologna.
• c. 1140: Gratian compiles the Decretum, the basic text of canon law.
• 1155 or 1158: Frederick Barbarossa issues the Authentica Habita protecting scholars.
• 1158: The Four Doctors of Bologna advise the emperor at Roncaglia.
• 1219: Pope Honorius III regulates the granting of degrees at Bologna.
• 1222: Scholars who left Bologna found the University of Padua.
• c. 1230s-1240s: Accursius completes the Glossa ordinaria.
• 1364: A faculty of theology is approved.
• 1888: Bologna celebrates its 800th anniversary, fixing 1088 as the founding date.

Why it matters

The University of Bologna created the idea of the university as an independent, self-governing community devoted to learning. Its revival of Roman law shaped European legal systems, and its institutions, degrees and traditions are still visible in universities around the world today.