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.

Through the foundation of the universities at Prague (1348), the Roman-German Empire caught up with and integrated itself into the European cultural space of universities, one of the consequences being a constant rise of the number of students. The studies collected in this volume analyse the acceptance and social effects of this process, comparing German and European phenomena. They concentrate on university members, students and graduates of extremely different origins, following the parameters of status, parental ties, group affiliation, and networks: crucial moments include the access to university, studies and leisure activities, the converging aspects of social and academic hierarchy and finally the application of academic expertise in different professional environments. The main focus thus lies on the medieval universities’ contribution to the creation of a modern "society of knowledge".

Historians have traditionally studied late medieval education backward – through the eyes of religious and political reformers critical of that which preceded them. This has led to significant distortions. Histories written from this perspective, tend to overemphasize the novelty of early modern educational reforms at the expense of evident continuities, and focus on conflict between ecclesiastical and lay authorities rather than cooperation. This book focuses instead, on the medieval experience of education through a detailed reconstruction of the educational landscape of late medieval Regensburg. The resulting picture provides new insights into the relationship between civic authorities and ecclesiastical institutions, the role of education in social and economic mobility, and the connections between local communities and broader European educational structures.

Traditionally grand ducal Tuscany and its cultural politics have been viewed through the lens of absolutism. Based on a wide range of newly found sources and building on recent revisionist scholarship, this study uses the universities of Pisa and Siena to expose the contradictions and the tensions which characterised the grand duchy. Setting the universities against the diplomatic, military, administrative, economic, ecclesiastical, and cultural development of the grand duchy, it shows how innovation mixed with tradition and local privileges were not only upheld but extended significantly.

At medieval universities, boundaries often served to reinforce divisions among competing groups and methods. Yet the crossing of these boundaries could also provide the basis for fruitful exchanges. The essays in this volume, contributed by specialists from Europe and North America in the study of medieval history, philosophy, theology, medicine and law, explore various ways in which boundaries between disciplines, faculties and between town and gown were both created and crossed at this new institutional form. Originally presented at the 2008 conference held in Madison, Wisconsin, they demonstrate in particular the richness and vitality of intellectual life at European universities both before and after the mid-thirteenth century.Contributors are David Luscombe, Marcia L. Colish, Chris Schabel, Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen, Kent Emery, Jr., John E. Murdoch, Michael R. McVaugh, Danielle Jacquart, Kenneth Pennington, Karl Shoemaker, Robert E. Lerner, and Jürgen Miethke.

This book deals with the different translations into Old French of Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum, dedicated to Philippe le Bel around 1279, and their readership. First-hand manuscript research has permitted us to understand not only the general context of their production but also the social conditions of their transmission and circulation. This work concentrates on different aspects of the reception of Giles of Rome’s pedagogical ideas by his “translators”, who are by no means passive in this process. This book provides not only a concrete idea of what Giles of Rome’s educational ideas became when mediated for the consumption of a lay public but also how the translators, in their translations, supported the transmission of re-appropriated knowledge.

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.

Amongst the oldest universities that of the Roman curia is the Great Unkown; little is known of the university of Rome (and of Avignon till 1378). To compensate the loss of sources materials mainly from the Vatican were intensively analysed and a prosopography of the dons and students (694 biograms in annex) drawn up. Some results: all three were legal universities of the southern type. The curial university was itinerant, it was continued at the general councils. Only when the curia resided there untroubled, the local schools of Rome (and Avignon) became great, international universities and different forms of association with the curial university were tried on. Rome was sought after by students from all over Europe for study of legal theory whereas praxis was learned at the papal court. Another attraction of Rome were the possibilities of attaining higher academic grades without much ceremony (first in theology, later also in law).

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.