The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Johns Hopkins Paperback) - Softcover

Grendler, Paul F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801880556 ISBN 13: 9780801880551

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004

Synopsis

Winner of the Howard R. Marraro Prize for Italian History from the American Historical Association

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2003

Italian Renaissance universities were Europe's intellectual leaders in humanistic studies, law, medicine, philosophy, and science. Employing some of the foremost scholars of the time―including Pietro Pomponazzi, Andreas Vesalius, and Galileo Galilei―the Italian Renaissance university was the prototype of today's research university. This is the first book in any language to offer a comprehensive study of this most influential institution.

In this magisterial study, noted scholar Paul F. Grendler offers a detailed and authoritative account of the universities of Renaissance Italy. Beginning with brief narratives of the origins and development of each university, Grendler explores such topics as the number of professors and their distribution by discipline, student enrollment (some estimates are the first attempted), famous faculty members, budget and salaries, and relations with civil authority. He discusses the timetable of lectures, student living, foreign students, the road to the doctorate, and the impact of the Counter Reformation. He shows in detail how humanism changed research and teaching, producing the medical Renaissance of anatomy and medical botany, new approaches to Aristotle, and mathematical innovation. Universities responded by creating new professorships and suppressing older ones. The book concludes with the decline of Italian universities, as internal abuses and external threats―including increased student violence and competition from religious schools―ended Italy's educational leadership in the seventeenth century.

About this title

From the Publisher:

"A magnificent achievement. Paul Grendler has written a stunningly comprehensive, detailed, and insightful history of the Italian universities from their origins to the eighteenth century. It will unquestionably become the standard work on the subject and remain so for a very long time. More than an institutional history, it is also a history of Italian culture over a span of five hundred years. Law, medicine, humanism, mathematics, philosophy, theology, and science all receive lucid and informative treatment."—John Monfasani, State University of New York at Albany

About the Author:

Paul F. Grendler is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Toronto, and former president of the Renaissance Society of America. He is the editor-in-chief of the prize-winning Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and author of several books including Schooling in Renaissance Italy, winner of the American Historical Association's Howard R. Marraro Prize for Italian History, also available from Johns Hopkins.

About this edition

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0801880556
• ISBN 13: 9780801880551
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 616