New Scholarship on Renaissance Universities.

UNIVERSITY OF FERRARA 

I maestri di medicina ed arti dell'Universita di Ferrara 1391-1950. Ed. Francesco Raspadori. (Pubblicazioni dell'Universita di Ferrara, 2.) Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1991. xxxi + 295 pp. IL 55,000. ISBN: 88-222-3906-7.

La rinascita del sapere. Libri e maestri dello studio ferrarese. Ed. Patrizia Castelli. Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1991. 514 pp. IL 90,000. ISBN: 88-317-5589-7.

UNIVERSITY OF MACERATA 

Atti dello Studium Generale Maceratense dal 1541 al 1551. Ed. Sandra Serangeli. (Studia et documenta historiae almi Studii Maceratensis, Documenti 1.) Turin: G. Giappichelli Editore, 1998. 219 pp. IL 30,000. ISBN: 88-348-7161-8.

Atti dello Studium Generale Maceratense dal 1551 at 1579. Ed. Sandra Serangeli. (Studia et documenta historiae almi Studii Maceratensis, Documenti 2.) Turin: G. Giappichelli Editore, 1999. 369 pp. IL 50,000. ISBN: 88-348-9052-3.

UNIVERSITY OF PAVIA 

Documenti per la storia dell'Universita di Pavia nella seconda meta del '400, vol. 1, 1450-1455. Ed. Agostino Sottili. (Presentazione di Ettore Cau.) Bologna: Cisalpino. Istituto Editoriale Universitario-Monduzzi Editore S.p.A., 1994. 224 pp. n.p. ISBN: 88-205-0746-3.

Lauree Pavesi nella seconda meta del '400, vol. 1, 1450-1475. Ed. Agostino Sottili. (Presentazione di Xenio Toscani.) Bologna and Milan: Cisalpino. Istituto Editoriale Universitario-Monduzzi Editore S.p.A., 1995. 405 pp. n.p. ISBN: 88-205-0771-4.

Simona Negruzzo. Theologiam discere et docere. La facolta teologica di Pavia nel XVI secolo. (Presentazione Xenio Toscani. Fonti e studi per la storia dell'Universita di Pavia, 23.) Bologna and Milan: Cisalpino. Istituto Editoriale Universitario-Monduzzi Editore S.p.A., 1995. xiv + 433 pp. n.p. ISBN: 88-205-0766-8.

UNIVERSITY OF PARIS 

Registre des conclusions de la Faculte de Theologie de l'Universite de Paris. Vol. 2: Du novembre 1533 au ler mars 1550. Ed. and intro. James K. Farge. (Textes et Documents sur l'Histoire des Universites, 3.) Paris: Klincksieck, 1994. 578 pp. n.p. ISBN: 2-252-02934-X.

UNIVERSITY OF PISA 

Storia dell'Universita di Pisa. Vol. 1: 1343-1737.2 vols. A cura della Commissione rettorale per La storia dell'Universita di Pisa. Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1993. ix + 741 pp. n.p. ISBN: 88-7781-080-7.

UNIVERSITY OF SIENA 

Le lauree dello Studio senese nel XVI secolo. Regesti degli atti dal 1516 a1 1573. Ed. Giovanni Minnucci and Paola Giovanna Morelli. (Bibliotheca Studii Senensis, 5.) Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1992. 470 pp. IL 48,000. ISBN: n.a.

Le lauree dello Studio senese nel XVI secolo. Regesti degli atti dal 1573 al 1579. Ed. Giovanni Minnucci and Paola Giovanna Morelli con la collaborazione di Silvio Pucci. (Universita degli Studi di Siena.) Siena: Edizioni Cantagalli, 1998. xviii + 166 pp. IL 25,000. ISBN: n.a.

L'Universita di Siena. 750 anni di storia. Siena: Amilcare Pizzi Editore, 1991. 597 pp. Not for sale; distributed by Monte dei Paschi di Siena.

UNIVERSITY OF ROME

I maestri della Sapienza di Roma dal 1514 at 1787: I rotuli e altre fonti. Ed. Emanuele Conte. (Fonti per la storia d'Italia, 116.) 2 vols. Rome: Nella Sede dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1991. 1141 pp. n.p. ISBN: 0392-1832.

ITALIAN UNIVERSITIES 

Annali di storia delle universita itatiane. Managing editor: Gian Paolo Brizzi. Vol. 1 (1997), 284 pp. IL 60,000. ISBN: 88-8091-537-1; Vol. 2 (1998), 324 pp. IL 60,000. ISBN: 88-491-1125-8; Vol. 3 (1999), 327 pp. IL 60,000. ISBN 88-491-1297-1. For subscriptions write to the publisher: CLUEB, Via Marsala 24, 40126 Bologna, Italy. Editorial address is: Annali di storia delle universita italiane, Casella Postale 5532, 40134 Bologna 22, Italy.

At the end of the nineteenth and in the first twenty years of the twentieth century a group of dedicated archivists and scholars published a series of documentary collections on Italian universities. They laid the foundations for the modern study of Renaissance universities. Then research languished, possibly because many scholars believed that universities resisted intellectual change during the Renaissance. Eugenio Garin, Hans Baron, and others correctly argued that humanism, the most powerful agent of change in the Renaissance, originated outside universities. Pioneering humanists usually sought and found positions in the courts and chanceries of city-states or monarchies and shunned universities. In 1351 Petrarch declined an invitation to teach at the University of Florence, and he strongly criticized much contemporary university learning in "On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others" in 1367. [1] Perhaps influenced by Petrarch, few twentieth-century scholars have studied Renaissance universities until recently.

Then things changed. In 1983 Charles B. Schmitt looked closely at the continuing importance of what he perceptively called "Renaissance Aristotelianisms," i. e., the variety of ways in which university scholars in natural philosophy and science interpreted and adapted Aristotle in the light of the recovery of late classical Greek works and other developments. He found much that was innovative and interesting in Italian universities. [2] At the same time, historians of medicine noted "the medical Renaissance of the sixteenth century," i.e., the development of medical humanism and Vesalian anatomy, in Italian and northern European universities. [3]

Now, these fourteen titles (ten collections of documents, two comprehensive histories of individual universities, one monograph on a neglected topic, and a new journal), all published in the 1990s, offer abundant evidence of a rebirth of interest in universities. The works are particularly welcome because they concentrate on lesser-known universities, i.e., Ferrara, Macerata, Parma, Pisa, Rome, and Siena, the little-known faculty of theology at Pavia, plus the controversial faculty of theology at Paris. Finally, a new journal devoted to Italian universities adds evidence of growing scholarly interest.

The University of Ferrara stands first in the alphabetical list. The commune of Ferrara and the Este ruler of the duchy tried to start a university in 1391 with the appointment of two to four teaching legists, but gave up by 1394. The university's real beginning was in 1442, the result of the urging of Guarino Guarini and the initiative and financial support of Marquis Leonello d'Este. The University of Ferrara became a significant second-tier university and something of a degree factory. Many students, especially non-Italians such as Nicolaus Copernicus, did the bulk of their studies elsewhere, then came to Ferrara for the doctoral examination, probably because the costs were lower. I maestri di medicina ed arti dell'Universita di Ferrara 1391-1950 provides annual lists of all the known professors and what they taught for all disciplines except law. The volume then presents summary chronological lists organized according to discipline, e. g., logic, natural philosophy, medical theory, practical medicine, Tho mistic theology, etc. Finally, pages 179-286 list alphabetically all the known professors with their life dates, years of teaching at Ferrara, and known published works. Although the work is very useful, there are problems of accuracy, which are not the editor's fault. As Raspadori notes in his introduction, the data for the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries come from secondary sources, because few early records have survived fire and theft. The older works are not always accurate. For example, Ferrante Borsetti, Historia almi Ferrariae Gymnasii (3 vols., Ferrara, 1735), assumed that all promoters of degree candidates taught, which was not the case. Consequently, the lists of professors and when they taught are not completely reliable for the fifteenth century. The data for the sixteenth and later centuries are considerably better. Despite the problem of sources, this is a fundamental work for the University of Ferrara.

It should be used along with La rinascita del sapere, a collection of articles celebrating the 600th anniversary of the supposed founding of the university in 1391. (Such celebrations almost always assume that a university began to function at the earliest possible date, whether or not a full teaching university existed.) The volume has many informative articles for the Renaissance period. Sabrina Chiellini provides bio-bibliographical information for all the humanists who taught at Ferrara in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Francesco Quinterio offers an excellent survey, with many illustrations, of the university buildings in its first hundred and fifty years. Alessandro Bruni discusses the teaching of medicinal botany in the Renaissance. Overall, the volume provides much information on the University of Ferrara in its early centuries.

The University of Macerata (located in a hilltop town in the Marches, inland from coastal Ancona) began in the academic year 1540-1541 with a papal charter and the appointment of about nine professors, seven in law. It continued to be a very small university (never more than twelve or thirteen professors) concentrating on law, in the sixteenth century. And it remains one of Italy's smallest historical universities, most of whose students pursue law degrees today. Although Macerata may be the least known and studied of Italy's Renaissance universities, that should change with the publication of Sandro Serangeli's two volumes of the Atti dello Studium Generale Maceratense, covering 1541 through 1579. The volumes publish filze 795 and 796 of the Archivio Priorale del Comune di Macerata in the Archivio di Stato in Macerata, the most important records for the first forty years of the university. Always in Latin, they include the rolls (lists of professors and the disciplines taught) for the academic years 1544-15 45 and 1547-1548, appointment notices, and numerous degrees conferred. The degree documents list the texts (puncta) on which the degree candidates were examined. Having read through these records in the summer of 1996, this reviewer can testify that the edition is scrupulously accurate. In addition, Serangeli provides copious notes, sometimes based on other archival records, about the professors and students mentioned, and adds comprehensive indices. These books may stimulate further investigation of an institution essential to the cultural life of the Marches.

Next comes Pavia, founded in 1361, a university which ranked just behind Bologna and Padua in the fifteenth century. The remarkable volumes of documents edited by Rodolfo Maiocchi early in this century carry the history of the University of Pavia to 1450. [4] Now Agostino Sottili, the pre-eminent contemporary historian of that university in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, has begun the task of publishing documents on the university after 1450. Documenti per la storia dell' Universita di Pavia nella seconda meta del '400, vol. 1, 1450-1455, publishes 208 documents or summaries of documents found in the state archives of Pavia and Milan. They include the roll for the academic year 1455-1456 which listed 58 professors; payment records for 1452-1453 from which one can reconstruct the faculty; and tantalizing notices about a strike by professors. In April 1453 some professors, possibly a majority, stopped teaching because they had not been paid. The government broke the strike and discharged the alle ged leader, a modestly paid and little known professor of medical theory, but restored him to his professorship when he begged forgiveness of the Duke of Milan. Lauree Pavesi nella second meta del '400, vol. 1, 1 450-1475 publishes 249 documents noting the conferral of licentiate (authorization to teach) and doctoral degrees, in a few cases with two documents for the same candidate, conferred between 7 May 1453 and 18 December 1475. Sottili also provides an introduction which describes in clear fashion Pavia's degree procedure, which was the same as found in other Italian universities.

The position of theology is the least studied and most misunderstood aspect of Italian universities. Indeed, some Renaissance professors in other subjects considered it unimportant. All Italian university towns had faculties of theology, but local mendicant order friars, especially Dominicans and Franciscans, lacking links to the university for arts, medicine, and law, did most of the theology teaching in their own monasteries, which also provided almost all of the students. Some universities had one or two professors of theology, again chosen from the local monasteries, on their rolls; others did not teach theology until the years during and after the Council of Trent (1545-1563). With her detailed and exhaustive study of theology at Pavia, Simona Negruzzo provides the most comprehensive study of theology at any Italian university since Giovanni Brotta and Gasparo Zonta's pioneering monograph on theology at Padua in the fifteenth century, La facolta teologica dell'Universita di Padova. Part 1: (Secoli XIV e XV), published in Padua in 1922. [5] She describes how the system worked, provides a wealth of information on the theologians who taught in the local monastic studia and the university, counts the number of theology doctorates awarded (the number increased greatly after the Council of Trent), and much else. It is an exemplary study.

By contrast with Italy, theology was far more important and popular at the University of Paris. Paris's faculty of theology was very influential, often controversial, and not always well understood by modern scholars. James K. Farge has studied every aspect of the Faculty of Theology of Paris in the first half of the sixteenth century with a monograph, a bio-bibliographical dictionary of the theologians, and by editing the records of the faculty. [6] The second volume of his edition of the conclusions of the Faculty of Theology begins 26 November 1533, and ends on 1 March 1550. The responses of the faculty to the Protestant Reformation, and its dealings with the king and Parlement of Paris, dominated these years. For example, in 1535 King Francis I asked the faculty's advice about a proposed colloquy, intended to promote religious union, with Philipp Melanchthon. The Faculty of Theology pointed out the many doctrinal differences between Melanchthon and Catholicism, and counselled against the meeting, which n ever occurred. The faculty pronounced on the orthodoxy of religious works, finding many written by Protestants and by Erasmus to be heretical. Its efforts culminated in lists of prohibited books issued in the 1540s. The faculty also handled much routine business, which offers insight into the activities of faculty and university and the lives of professors and students. Farge has meticulously edited the documents, and his notes add much additional information culled from other archival sources. Appendices and three indices conclude the volume.

The University of Pisa was founded in 1343, but closed when Florence conquered the city in 1406. It came back to life when Lorenzo "Il Magnifico" de' Medici moved the University of Florence to Pisa in 1473, leaving behind a handful of mostly humanistic professors, and made Pisa the preferred university of the Medici state. Pisa's greatest period occurred after 1543, when it had about forty-five professors, including the young mathematician Galileo Galilei, who taught from 1589 to 1592, and accomplished scholars in medicine and law. The folio-sized two-part work, Storia dell'Universita di Pisa. Vol. 1: 1343-1737, covers every aspect of the University of Pisa. Marco Tangheroni (for the period 1343-1406), Rodolfo Del Gratta (for 1406-1543), and Danilo Marrara (1543-1737) open the volume with chronological surveys. Next come articles discussing each discipline in turn, followed by a study of Pisa's botanical garden (founded about 1545) and a chapter on students. Particularly useful are lists, compiled by Rodolfo Del Gratta and Danilo Barsanti, of all the professors and the subjects taught. The volume also prints the foundation bull of 1343 and the statutes of 1543, and is graced with many illustrations. This is now the fundamental study on the University of Pisa.

Siena (founded in 1246), the other Tuscan university, was known for legal studies. After Siena became incorporated into the duchy of Tuscany in 1557, the Medici rulers favored the University of Pisa at the expense of Siena. Nevertheless, the Sienese commune maintained Siena as a vibrant and innovative university. The large folio volume, L'Universita di Siena. 750 anni di storia, offers detailed chronological accounts of different eras, plus detailed analyses of teaching and research in the various disciplines by specialists including Paolo Nardi, Peter Denley, Giovanni Minnucci, and Gabriella Piccinni. The volume has many color illustrations of Siena's incomparable architecture and countryside.

Despite relegation to second place among Tuscan universities, numerous students, especially Germans and other ultramontanes, came to Siena for legal studies. The two volumes of summaries of degree documents, Le lauree dello Studio senese nel XVI secolo, edited by Giovanni Minnucci and Paola Giovanna Morelli, make this very clear. Siena conferred licentiates and doctorates (normally at the same time) on 1,288 individuals between 1516 and 1579, an average of 20 annually. Seventy-seven per cent of the degrees were in law. Non-Italians received twenty-seven per cent of the degrees, Germans over twelve per cent of the total. German students, including many Protestants, kept coming, despite wars and the religious division of Europe.

I maestri di Sapienza di Roma dal 1514 al 1787 prints all the extant rolls of the University of Rome. In 1514, Rome had 87 professors, an astonishingly high number. When La Sapienza recovered from the Sack of 1527 and its aftermath, it settled into a modest but secure position as a regional university serving the needs of students from the papal state and the Kingdom of Naples. It had an annual average of thirty to forty professors between 1548 and 1600. Sometimes the beadle, Alessio Lorenzani, filled the empty spaces and the backs of the large sheets of paper containing the rolls from the 1560s, 1570s and 1580s (found in Archivio Segreto Vaticano records) with much additional information, including caustic remarks about professors who had few students or who spoke Latin poorly. Conte's excellent edition includes all of this, as well as summary tables organized by teaching position. Having studied these records before Conte's publication, this reviewer can testify that the edition is meticulously edited. The work clarifies Rome's position as a significant second rank university, with a number of influential professors.

Annali di storia delle universita italiane, a new annual periodical dedicated to the history of Italian universities in all eras, appeared in 1997 and has produced three volumes to date. Sponsored by the Centro interuniversitario per la storia delle universita italiane, to which eleven Italian universities belong, and edited by Professor Gian Paolo Brizzi, an eminent historian of Italian schools and universities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, these folio-sized volumes contain articles based on original research, reviews, news about archives, announcements of conferences, and many illustrations, all for about $30 per year. The articles published to date are of high quality and several deal with the Renaissance. For example, volume 3 contains Elda Martellozzo Form's illuminating study of the counts palatine in Padua and the degrees that they awarded in the fifteenth century (79-119). It is the best account yet published about this path to degrees which avoided examination by, and the large fees pai d to, colleges of doctors.

None of the above works has been reviewed previously in Renaissance Quarterly or any other North American periodical, so far as is known, but all belong in every research library. Collections of documents and histories of their predecessors do much to illuminate how research universities became the glorious and frustrating institutions of today.

(1.) Petrarch's letter of 6 April 1351, declining appointment to the University of Florence, is found in Statuti dell'Universita e Studio Fiorentino dell'anno MCCCLXXXVII, ed. Alessandro Gherardi (Florence, 1881; reprint Bologna, 1973), 285-86. For an English translation of "On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others" by Hans Nachod, see The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr. (Chicago and London, 1948), 47-133.

(2.) See Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1983) and the three collections of his articles: Studies in Renaissance Philosophy and Science (London, 1981); The Aristotelian Tradition and Renaissance Universities (London, 1984), and Reappraisals in Renaissance Thought, ed. Charles Webster (London, 1989).

(3.) The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, edited by A. Wear, R K. French, and I. M. Lonie (Cambridge, 1983), is a typical and excellent collection of articles, most of which deal with medical scholars who taught at universities.

(4.) Codice diplomatico dell' Universita di Pavia. Raccolta ed ordinato da Rodolfo Maiocchi, vol. 1, 1361-1400; vol. 2, part 1, 1401-1440; vol. 2, part 2: 1441-1450 (Pavia, 1905-1915; reprint, Bologna, 1971). Agostino Sottili's studies of the University of Pavia and the links between Pavia and German humanists are now collected in his Universita e cultura. Studi sui rapporti italo-tedeschi nell'eta dell'Umanesimo (Goldbach, 1993).

(5.) No further volumes were published.

(6.) James K. Farge, Orthodoxy and Reform in Early Reformation France. The Faculty of Theology of Paris, 1500-1543. (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 32. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985); Biographical Register of Paris Doctors of Theology, 1500-1536 (Subsidia mediaevalia, 10. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980); and Registre des proces-verbaux de la Faculte de theologie de l'Universite & Paris (de janvier 1524 a novembre 1533). Ed. James K. Farge, preface by Andre Tuilier (Textes er Documents sur l'Histoire des Universites, 2. Paris: Klincksieck, 1990).