Two important institutions developed in the Middle Ages: the papal curia and the universities. The history of both institutions has been studied for a long time, resulting in a huge amount of scholarly works. Professor Emerita Brigide Schwarz combines these two fields of study in her monograph about the curial university and Rome’s civic university. The history of these two universities has admittedly been studied earlier, but always separately from each other — even though they have a long common history. The aim of the book is therefore to “give an account, for the first time, of the joint history of the two Roman universities” (421).
This is not an easy task due to the lack of direct sources such as student registers or normative-administrative documentation. For this reason Schwarz has based her study on other available sources. She has turned every stone in finding the smallest references to the teachers and students in these two universities, on the bases of which she has succeeded in creating an overall picture of the topic.
Most of the sources used in the study are a result of the work she and other German researchers have conducted in the Vatican Secret Archives for the source publication Repertorium Germanicum. She gives the biggest honor of this work to her mentor Hermann Diener, to whom the book is dedicated. Schwarz has completed this huge source material by including, for example, biographies of humanists working in the Roman curia, edited papal sources from all over Christendom, and documentation related to the European universities.
Schwarz has created a picture of the two universities, together and separately. She ably demonstrates how the universities collaborated with each other when the popes were ruling from Rome. The period covered in this book, from 1300 to 1471, was an especially unfortunate time for such collaborations because of the period of the Avignon papacy (1309–77), followed by the Great Schism and the period of conciliarism when the popes were absent from the urbs aeterna. Since the curial university followed the pope, the paths of the two universities seldom crossed until the mid-fifteenth century, when the papacy returned to Rome and the town became an important center of education.
The book begins with an introduction presenting previous research and the sources used. This is followed by three parts. In the first, the author meticulously presents the history of the two universities between the years 1303 and 1471. The second part analyzes the activity, structure, and personnel of the universities. The third part, “Exkurse,” consists of eight independent studies that carefully analyze specific themes or sources related to the topic of the book. The book is written in German but its conclusions are drawn in English. The English summary is followed by a large appendix. In the “Anhang I” are eighteen edited documents central to this study, while the “Anhang II” consists of hundreds of small biographies (partly composed by Christiane Schuchard) of persons who have either studied or taught at the universities. The structure of the book is not the most reader-friendly, especially between the first two parts and the “Exkurse” part. Also, the replacement of the conclusions with English summary is an unconventional solution, but certainly welcome for non-German readers.
The author has not underestimated her readers. This book therefore cannot be recommended as light reading or as directed toward undergraduate students. Understanding the book requires knowledge of the earlier history of universities in Europe and Rome, as well as the functioning of the papal curia and the particularities of the papal source material. The English summary, however, can be warmly recommended to anyone interested in the topic. It summarizes in a skilled and informative way the chronological development of the two universities, separately and together. Also, the material in the appendixes is without doubt very useful for scholars dealing with universities or the papal curia.
