ABSTRACT

Till the end of the ancien régime, the universities north of the Alps comprised four faculties: arts, theology, law and medicine. By contrast, in Northern Italy arts and medicine together made up one ‘faculty’ called universitas (Appendices 1 and 2). The arts faculty was considered a propaedeutic centre, training students to acquire the essential conceptual and factual knowledge that would give them the competence to follow courses in the higher faculties. Arts faculties regularly complained about the fact that students in the higher faculties had not previously passed through the arts faculty. They wanted the responsible authorities to make this compulsory. They were never completely successful, however, in achieving their goal.