The idea of the university

In the late nineteenth century, well before the celebration was supposed to take place, a committee in Bologna chaired by the famous poet Giosué Carducci suggested 1888 as the eight-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the University in Bologna. In fact no university had actually been founded in Bologna in 1088. The argument the committee put forward instead was that there was evidence for arrangements existing that year for teaching law independently of the religious schools of Bologna.