List of early modern universities in Europe

It also includes short-lived foundations and educational institutions whose university status is a matter of debate.

The operation of the degree-awarding university with its corporate organization and relative autonomy, which had emerged in the Christian medieval world,[1] was continued into the new era.

[2] While the universitas arrived in Eastern Europe as far as Moscow, many were established further west either by the new Protestant powers or the Catholic Counter-Reformation spearheaded by the Jesuits.

As a community of teachers and taught, accorded certain rights, such as administrative autonomy and the determination and realization of curricula (courses of study) and of the objectives of research as well as the award of publicly recognized degrees, it is a creation of medieval Europe, which was the Europe of papal Christianity... No other European institution has spread over the entire world in the way in which the traditional form of the European university has done.

Even the name of the universitas, which in the Middle Ages was applied to corporate bodies of the most diverse sorts and was accordingly applied to the corporate organization of teachers and students, has in the course of centuries been given a more particular focus: the university, as a universitas litterarum, has since the 18th century been the intellectual institution which cultivates and transmits the entire corpus of methodically studied intellectual disciplines.