The locus of the medieval intellectual revival was a new institution: the university. The first universities emerged from the same regularizing impulses that inspired the consolidation of feudal states and the reforms of Innocent III. The twelfth century revival of learning had led to a proliferation of competing schools in such centers as Paris and Bologna. Church and municipal authorities became alarmed at the potential for disorder, and the masters soon recognized the need for an organization that could both protect their interests and ensure that new masters were properly trained. By the mid-twelfth century, a rudimentary guild system was beginning to evolve.

At Paris, the scholars soon found themselves in conflict with the cathedral chapter of Notre Dame, which tried to control them, and the townspeople, who were trying to protect their lives and property against the students. The students were for the most part adolescent males who lived without supervision and were capable of rape, theft, and murder. They in turn complained of gouging by landlords and tavern keepers. Such grievances were ignored, while attempts to arrest student criminals often led to bloody riots. Each new outrage brought a flood of appeals to the pope or the king. Between 1215 and 1231 a series of statutes and charters were issued that established the privileges of the university in both civil and canon law.

The situation at Oxford was not much different. The English masters had gathered in a market town that had no cathedral or other ecclesiastical organization against which to rebel, but their relations with the townsfolk were as envenomed as those at Paris. In 1209, after a violent riot, teaching was suspended and many of the scholars departed for Cambridge to found a separate university. Oxford's privileges were guaranteed only by the papal humiliation of King John in 1214. John had supported the town against what he perceived as clerical privilege, and Innocent III not only sided with the masters but also forced the municipality to provide an annual subsidy for impoverished students.

If the origins of Bologna were less violent, it was because its faculty emphasized the study of law instead of theology or the liberal arts. The students tended to be older men of considerable influence who were adept at securing imperial and papal privileges without knifeplay. They were also unwilling to be ruled by their teachers. Bologna and the Italian universities based upon its model were dominated by the students, who hired the faculty and determined the curriculum.

As the idea of universities grew popular, a number were founded by royal or papal edict. By 1500, Spain and every region of Germany, including Switzerland and the Low Countries, had its own university. Most of them were princely foundations, while some, including Erfurt and Cologne, were established by clerics with the help of city governments. . .

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