List of medieval universities

The list of medieval universities comprises universities (more precisely, Studium Generale) which existed in Europe during the Middle Ages. It also includes short-lived foundations and European educational institutions whose university status is a matter of debate. The degree-awarding university with its corporate organization and relative autonomy is a product of medieval Christian Europe. Before 1500 more than eighty universities were established in Western and Central Europe. During the subsequent Colonization of the Americas the university was introduced to the New World, marking the beginning of its worldwide spread as the center of higher learning everywhere (see List of oldest universities).

There were many institutions of learning (Studium) in the Middle Ages in Latin Europe—cathedral schools, "schools of rhetoric" (law faculties), etc. Historians generally restrict the term "medieval university" to refer to an institution of learning that was referred to as Studium Generale in the Middle Ages.

There is no official strict definition of a Studium generale, the term having emerged from customary usage. The following properties were common among them, and are often treated as defining criteria:

Charters issued by the Pope or Holy Roman Emperor were often needed to ensure privileges 4–6. The fourth condition (teaching elsewhere without examination) was originally considered by scholars of the time to be the most important criterion, with the result that the appellation Studium Generale was customarily reserved to refer only to the oldest and most prestigious schools—specifically, Salerno, Bologna and Paris, and sometimes Oxford—until this oligopoly was broken by papal and imperial charters in the course of the 13th century. The fifth criterion (continued benefices) was the closest there was to an "official" definition of a Studium Generale used by the Church and academics from the 14th century onwards, although there were some notable exceptions (e.g., neither Oxford nor Padua received this right, but they were nonetheless universally considered "Studia Generalia by custom").

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