This volume publishes posthumously the doctoral dissertation of Gaines Post (1902–86), one of America's most distinguished medievalists, which he completed at Harvard University in 1931 under the direction of Charles Homer Haskins. Until now, only parts of it have appeared in print: an article in 1929 that eventually became its first chapter; a second article in 1932 that was developed from its eighth chapter; and two other articles (1934 and 1955) that drew upon material from the dissertation. Post's other publications, significant in both number and import, were, as William J. Courtenay notes in his very useful preface, primarily devoted to “the influence of canon and Roman law on representative institutions, legal theory, governmental power, and the concepts of the State” (i). Thus, among the contributions this volume achieves is to heighten Post's status as an important historian of medieval universities, a position he already held to a degree on the basis of the aforementioned articles. The ten chapters of his dissertation reveal a richly learned young scholar, a mind of powerful insight, and a broadly conceived view of topics touching the institutional structure and evolution of the earliest universities.

Post's dissertation is organized into two parts. The first is devoted to the papacy and the constitution of the universities. In seven chapters Post treats the generally cautious but almost always crucial way its policy shaped the eventual emergence of the medieval university. The papacy did not seek to guide; rather its role was often one of adjustment. By the middle of the thirteenth century it had secured the legality and independence of corporations of masters and/or students and in so doing had established itself as the “source of all authority over education” (117). The second part of the dissertation focuses on the papacy and the members of the universities (i.e., masters and students, with one chapter devoted to each). Here Post's treatment is of salaries and patronage, of benefices supporting education and material conditions in university towns. The dissertation ends with an elegant overview of the conclusions drawn in preceding chapters, showing that the role the papacy played was to guide new developments along traditional lines, allowing traditional external authority to be retained locally, but subjecting it to papal authority. The crucial elements it supported were the issue of who grants the license, what authority it carried (ius ubique docendi), and what privileges the masters and students had (including dispensation from residence in the benefices they held). These became the hallmarks of the eventual studium generale (i.e., university).

Post's picture of these constitutional developments did not play as significant a role in subsequent university historiography as it might have. Except for his publications noted above, it was not for the most part available to later scholars. Though Courtenay notes in his preface that Post would surely have reexamined, rethought, and reworked conclusions had he sought to publish a revised dissertation, his general conclusions on papal-university relations and constitutional matters remain fundamentally sound. This can be seen by comparing his treatments with the institutional and organizational picture of medieval universities now available in, for example, Universities in the Middle Ages (ed. Hilde de Ridder-Symoens [1992]). Even more recent studies of individual institutions, sometimes with newly discovered source material, have served mostly to clarify and lightly modify questions of relations between the papacy and the universities rather than altering in any significant way Post's conclusions.

Other developments in university historiography, however, have complemented the institutional picture reflected in Post's dissertation. The curriculum and intellectual life of universities had, of course, been of interest to scholars long before he studied with Haskins (and indeed he would make important contributions in this area, in particular through his work on legal history and political theory). But developments in social history have, in the last half-century-plus, been powerfully added to the bibliography of medieval university history. Questions of social origins, mobility, career paths, and patronage networks are now staples of the discipline. For example, the series in which Post's now-published dissertation appears lists many significant contributions in this area. In sum, this volume represents a still-valuable work of scholarship and an appropriate tribute to a major scholar of the previous century.