Medieval & Reformational Universities

Medieval & Reformation Universities
11th to 17th century
1088 AD
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Founding of University of Bologna by law students in northern Italy; city of 40,000 residents in 1250. Generally accepted to be the first and oldest European university |
1090
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Founding of the University of Paris by teachers/masters; Abelard (1079-1149) among its earlier teachers |
1096
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Founding of Oxford University, at Oxford, 50 miles northwest of London |
1160
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1179
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Pope Alexander III (1159-81), who studied law at Bologna, endorsed cathedral schools and right of University of Bologna to issue teaching licenses |
1209
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Scholars defect from Oxford to establish Cambridge University |
1217
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Founding of the University of Salamanca, Spain |
1229
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Founding of the University of Toulouse, France |
1231
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Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) recognized the political autonomy of Europe’s universities |
1235
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Founding of the University of Orleans, France |
1249
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Founding of University College, Oxford, the first of the University’s endowed residential colleges |
1250
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Establishment of four colleges at the University of Paris, including the Sorbonne |
1263
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Founding of Balliol College, Oxford University |
1264
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Dominican scholar and University of Paris professor Thomas Aquinas completed his Summa Theologica |
1290
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Founding of the University of Coimbra, in Lisbon, Portugal |
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1441
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England’s King Henry VI founds King’s College, Cambridge; linked to Eton as its feeder school. |
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1517
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Martin Luther, a graduate of the University of Erfurt and professor at the University of Wittenberg, formally breaks from the Roman Catholic Church and launches the Reformation |
1534
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John Calvin (1509-64), graduate of the University of Paris, makes his break from Rome and establishes his principal base in Geneva. |
1535
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England’s Henry VIII breaks with Rome and transforms Oxford and Cambridge into universities of the Protestant Reformation; Catholic colleges closed |
Henry VIII 1491-1547; monarch 1509-1547 |
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1546
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Trinity College founded at Oxford by Henry VIII; would be a center of Puritan activity later in the century; 15 graduates of Trinity among the participants in the “Great Migration” to New England, including John Winthrop. |
1547
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Edward VI succeeds to the English throne upon death of Henry VIII; becomes incapacitated in 1553 and brings on a dynastic crisis. |
1553
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Henry’s daughter Mary succeeds to the throne; attempts to reinstate Catholicism as a state church |
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Some 800 Protestants leave England for the Continent to wait out Mary’s reign. The “Marian Exile.” |
1558
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Elizabeth, Mary’s half-sister, succeeds to the throne; makes it her business to confirm England’s Protestantism. |
1582
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Founding of the University of Edinburgh; later a center of the Scottish Enlightenment |
1584
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Emmanuel College founded at Cambridge by Elizabeth’s finance minister on the prior site of a Dominican priory. Becomes center of Puritan camp with Anglicanism. Some 29 participants in the “Great Migration” to England in 1630s among its graduates when college lost favor with Charles I and his bishop, William Laud.. |
1603
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Upon Elizabeth’s death, James I succeeds to the English throne. First of the Tudor monarchs. Reigns until his death in 1627. |
1625
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Charles I succeeds his father to the throne; takes increasingly hardline against Puritan critics of his brand of quasi-Catholic Anglicanism. Bishop William Laud his enforcer. |
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Last updated; January 27, 2014
ram31@columbia.edu