List of medieval universities

The following properties were common among them, and are often treated as defining criteria:[5] Charters issued by the Pope or Holy Roman Emperor were often needed to ensure privileges 4–6.

The fourth condition (teaching elsewhere without examination) was originally considered by scholars of the time to be the most important criterion, with the result that the appellation studium generale was customarily reserved to refer only to the oldest and most prestigious schools—specifically Salerno, Bologna, Paris, and sometimes Oxford—until this oligopoly was broken by papal and imperial charters in the course of the 13th century.

[5] The fifth criterion (continued benefices) was the closest there was to an "official" definition of a studium generale used by the Church and academics from the 14th century onwards, although there were some notable exceptions (e.g., neither Oxford nor Padua received this right, but they were nonetheless universally considered "Studia Generalia by custom").

Some Italian universities, for instance, were quick to obtain papal charters and thus the privileges and title of a studium generale, but their student catchment never went much beyond the local district or they had only a couple of masters engaged in teaching.

It is common to include the former and exclude the latter from lists of "Medieval universities", but some historians have disputed this convention as arbitrary and unreflective of the state of higher learning in Europe.