ABSTRACT
The very existence of higher education supposes that the community in question has succeeded in setting up a system of elementary education. This latter can take many different forms, but it must be capable of providing its alumni with a sufficient grounding. At the birth of the first Western European universities in the early part of the thirteenth century, their teaching was clearly international. The universal rather than the international character of medieval higher education was neither a chance happening nor the outcome of concerted action, but rather the result of various causes. The decline in the international character of superior higher education was the consequence of the creation of the nation-state. The cause, or the effect, of the dislocation of medieval Christianity was the founding of the nation-states.
