The Rise of the University: A Medieval Institution

Dr. Peter O’Hagan, University of St. Michael’s College

From the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, there arose in Italy and France an educational environment in which law, theology, and medicine became the goal of higher education through the rediscovery of the classical, Graeco–Roman past and its more recent Arabic and Jewish interpreters. This talk will set out the development of the university, its relationship to the political, educational, and intellectual developments occurring in Italy and France, and its rise to importance in the medieval world and beyond, as one of the most enduring legacies of the European Middle Ages.