Medieval Maintenance, the Great Interrogations, and the Ruins of the University

Abstract

The University has been around for most of this millennium and its forms have been remarkably constant throughout that time. It began as an attempt by some young Italians who wanted to know about Roman law and Greek medicine and who banded together to hire some instructors. But local disputes with the townsfolk gave the Church a chance to butt in and within a hundred years or so the Church granted charters to universities. Meanwhile, back in Paris the Cathedral school, organized on Roman models organized on Greek ones, became a place for vigorous lecturers to take on students in the heart of the most vigorous market town in Europe. Soon the students in Paris also wanted law and medicine, and, with the Church in charge, theology was the third learned profession.