Abstract
(FROM A CORRESPONDENT.) WHEN is a university not a university? That is the riddle set to the philosophic historian by the spirited claim of Pavia to be the oldest university of Europe. The answer mostly given is not before the twelfth century, if it was then when the name Universitas, i.e. of students from different nations and of different subjects, began to displace the older term of Studium Generale, which lingered on in Italy for many centuries. But the distinguished writers on medieval law and history who have made Pavia well known in recent years, especially the present Rector, Prof. Arrigo Solmi, seem to be justified in maintaining that when a summons is issued by a great monarch, the greatest of his day, to a number of towns in a wide area, to centralise their efforts in all studies beyond school-level in a single spot under the direction of one eminent teacher and his colleagues, whom the said monarch has expressly invited and established, it becomes a question of name rather than fact whether we call the result a university or no.
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The University Celebrations at Pavia. Nature 115, 879–880 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/115879a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/115879a0