Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance – serie

Peter Moraw, a leading constitutional historian of the later middle ages, has taken a particular interest in the study of medieval universities as training grounds of Western elites. His essays collected here from widely scattered source begin with general reflections on the medieval university, are followed by 8 studies of Central and East Central centers, such as Prague, Heidelberg and Cracow, and conclude with 4 social-historical and prosopographical papers on professors, students and graduates and their careers. Appendices include a sketch of the Repertorium academicum Germanicum project, and a full list of the author’s published work.

Academic condemnation has long been recognized as an important issue in the history of universities and the history of medieval thought. Yet few studies have examined the phenomenon in serious detail. This work is the first book-length study of academic condemnations at Oxford. It explores every known case in detail, including several never examined before, and then considers the practice of condemnation as a whole. As such, it provides a context to see John Wyclif and the Oxford Lollards not as unique figures, but as targets of a practice a century old by 1377. It argues that condemnation did not happen purely for reasons of theological purity, but reflected social and institutional pressures within the university.

The Lausanne Academy was the first Protestant Academy in a French-speaking territory, created twenty years before the one in Geneva. In the 1540’s, the Lausanne Academy developed a new model for higher education that influenced the entire Calvinist world. Far from forming only pastors, it attracted the sons of Swiss and European Protestant elites through its advanced trilingual education (Latin, Greek, and Hebrew), in accordance with the cultural standards developed by Renaissance humanism. This book, based on a vast body of unpublished archival sources, examines the Lausanne Academy’s historical development, academic program, students, faculty, and finances, revealing it as an essential milestone in the history of European education where the blossoming of humanistic culture and confessional rivalries met.

The canon law literature of the period after the Decretals of pope Gregory IX (1234) has not been investigated systematically since vol. II of the renowned manual by J. F. von Schulte (1877). The 18 papers collected in this book, originally published between 1971 and 2005, scattered in many specialized periodicals, cover a wide range of canon law texts, including prominent authors as Innocent IV, Hostiensis, Duranti. They are all drawing from a fresh assessment of the manuscript tradition and a critical review of relevant scholarship. The reprinted articles are supplemented by substantial additions and completed by a series of new Exkursus. The presentation of abundant manuscript materials makes up for a sort of reference book, which will be indispensable for any further research in the canon law tradition of the 13th and 14th centuries.

The four Livres des procurateurs de la nation germanique de l’Université d’Orléans (1444-1602) are a unique source for the history of European universities. The quarterly reports of the presidents of the association of law students allow us to reconstitute in detail the everyday life of students from the Germanic countries during the Renaissance. From the published first and second 'Livres' between 1444-1567 (same authors, Brill 1971 and 1988) it appears that the alumni got key positions in Church and State in their homelands. The reports of the third 'Livre' for the years 1567-1587 describe the fortunes of the German Nation and the University and offer a unique look at the role of Orleans and its graduates in the religious wars and the growing confessionalisation of Europe.

The four Livres des procurateurs de la nation germanique de l’Université d’Orléans (1444-1602) are a unique source for the history of European universities. The quarterly reports of the presidents of the association of law students allow us to reconstitute in detail the everyday life of students from the Germanic countries during the Renaissance. From the published first , second and third Livres between 1444-1587 (same authors, Brill 1971-2013) it appears that the alumni got key positions in Church and State in their homelands. The reports of the fourth Livre for the years 1587-1602 describe the fortunes of the German Nation and the University and offer a unique look at the role of Orleans and its graduates in the religious wars and the growing confessionalisation of Europe.

Winner of The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America's 2018 Oskar Halecki Award and Winner of the Early Slavic Studies Association 2016 Book PrizeThe first fully developed history of the University of Cracow in this period in over a century, “A Pearl of Powerful Learning.” The University of Cracow in the Fifteenth Century places the school in the context of late medieval universities, traces the process of its foundation, analyzes its institutional growth, its setting in the Polish royal capital, its role in national life, and provides a social and geographical profile of students and faculty. The book includes extended treatment of the content of intellectual life and accomplishments of the school with reference to the works of its most important scholars in the medieval arts curriculum, medicine, law, and theology. The emergence of early Renaissance humanist interests at the university is also discussed.Winner of the Early Slavic Studies Association 2016 Book Prize for most outstanding recent scholarly monograph on pre-modern Slavdom. The work was described by the prize committee as: "A thoughtful, highly-informed, and nuanced history of the University of Cracow, an important institution in a pivotal period of Poland’s history. Knoll's treatment of such important issues as the role of the University in national life and the controversial and highly technical matter of the impact of Humanism are dealt with tactfully and thoughtfully. The book will become the definitive work on this topic, and will ensure that the material will rapidly be absorbed into general histories of education and of universities in the Renaissance."Winner of The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America's 2018 Oskar Halecki Award. This award recognizes a book of particular value and significance dealing with the Polish experience and is named after the distinguished 20th century Polish medieval historian, Oskar Halecki, who was one of the founders of PIASA. Professor Knoll will be recognized for this award during the 77th Annual Meeting of PIASA in Gdansk, Poland in June 2019.

In Medizin im Konflikt, Jana Madlen Schütte analyses the status of medical doctors between university and market in the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the early modern period. Their positon initially at the universities as well as on the medical market was precarious. As the smallest faculty, medicine had to stand up to the other disciplines. Meanwhile, as participants in the medical market, the faculty members had to face competitors such as barbers, surgeons, apothecaries, and Jewish doctors. Jana Madlen Schütte explores how this situation of dual conflict affected the actions of the medical doctors and the strategies that they employed to demonstrate that their approaches were scientific as well as practical.

One of the leading historians of medieval universities in the last generation, Gaines Post published less than a quarter of his 1931 dissertation on the role of the papacy in the rise of universities. The entire work merits publication, both because of the remaining content and because it reveals more on how Gaines Post, a product of Charles Homer Haskins' seminar at Harvard in the late 1920s, approached his subject. The volume covers the interaction of the papacy with multiple universities from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and opens up a much broader range of topics, considering papal intervention and influence in the areas of licensing to teach, financial support for masters and students, dispensations for study, regulation of housing rents, and the founding of colleges.See inside the book.

In Kreative Gegensätze Marcel Bubert analyses the debates among medieval scholastics on the social usefulness of learned knowledge in their specific social and cultural contexts. In particular, he shows how the skepticism towards the scholars as well as the tensions between the University of Paris, the French royal court, and the citizens of Paris had profound effects on the scientific community, and led to very different views on the utility of philosophy. Some Masters responded to the expectations of society by emphasizing the autonomy of philosophical cognition. Others departed radically from this notion of science “for its own sake”, and created decidedly “practical” concepts of knowledge. The examination of these contentious relations shows how the dynamics of mutual demarcation within this “constellation” became intellectually prolific by way of generating highly original and innovative responses to the question of the utility of philosophy.See inside the book.