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The First Universities

The Roman Empire has no universities at all, at that time superior teaching wasn’t very popular. When the teachers decided that they wanted to teach, what they would do is start their very own small schools and bring together a few students that wanted to be taught. They could have also written a book to keep for reference as record of their teaching history. Or it could have happened that a student produced a written account of the work.

Sometimes in the “olden days” talking about a university referred to a large school that had more than one teacher who taught all of the subjects to the learners. This brought on students from all over Europe. Referring to this definition of a university, there are three candidates for the claim of being the first university in the Western Europe. There was a medical school that was founded in the 9th century in southern Italy but it started to fade away after a few centuries. A school similar to that one was in Bologna in the 11th century, but the difference with this one and the other is that this one grew to cover more subjects and it still stands today, as the University of Bologna. Then, there was a rather famous school located in southern Spain, Cordova. It was a large school that had the advantage of being close to the Middle East where they most of their scholars came from. This school practiced religious topics, medicine, philosophy and mathematics. It became a wonderful international school and students from all over Europe attended. Many people say that this was the first proper university in Europe.