High Middle Ages · Europe · Culture

1119

University of Bologna consolidates

1119

Irnerius and the glossators had been lecturing on Justinian's rediscovered Corpus Juris Civilis for a generation, but around this year the students self-organized into a legal collective that historians later identify as Europe's first university. Students banded together by nationality into nationes that negotiated fees and teaching schedules, creating a model of academic self-governance that would spread to Paris, Oxford, and eventually the entire continent.