Common Knowledge

Some people think of universities as intellectual fairylands, sequestered from what they call the "real world." They could certainly not be thinking of the universities of the Italian Renaissance. As Grendler's massive and magisterial book shows, early Italian universities were very much of the world: instruction did not take place in isolated colleges but rather in public lectures, often wherever students and teachers could find a place to meet. The professors were laymen, not clergy, and the subject matter was largely law, medicine, or humanistic studies (and less theology and the more abstruse arts). The first university was founded in Bologna in the late twelfth century, when young men who wanted to study law went looking for teachers. They created a student association that controlled the professors' wages and lives, until the commune took over in the thirteenth century when it recognized that the university's presence benefited the city economically and symbolically. Other Italian cities followed suit, seeking this mark of status—with mixed success. The fascinating details of Grendler's book suggest that much has changed in universities since these early days: for example, in the fifteenth century Paduan prostitutes were taxed to pay the salaries of university professors (deans, take note). At the same time, much is disconcertingly familiar. Students were powerful consumers, and the life of a professor was certainly a volatile one. Lectures were monitored and the professor's salary was docked if a lecture was missed or attracted few students. Some professors were manifestly "stars" and universities raided each other for lustrous scholars. Reading Grendler's book will amuse and edify university administrators as much as scholars of Renaissance intellectual history.