The school of medicine benefited from a policy of the Guilhem lords of Montpellier, by which any licensed physician might lecture there: with no fixed limit to the number of teachers, lectures multiplied, thus providing a great choice of teachers coming from all around the Mediterranean region (Guilhem VIII act of January 1181).

[4] The statutes given in 1220 by Cardinal Conrad von Urach, legate of Pope Honorius III, which were confirmed and extended in 1240, placed this school under the direction of the Bishop of Maguelonne, but the school enjoyed a great deal of de facto autonomy.

The school was famous for arguing in the fourteenth century that the Black Death was caused by a miasma entering the opening of the body's pores, citing theories developed by Galen.

[5] In 1529, after some years as an apothecary, Nostradamus entered the University of Montpellier to study for a doctorate in medicine.

He was expelled shortly afterwards when it was discovered that he had been an apothecary, a "manual trade" expressly banned by the university statutes.

The Jardin des plantes de Montpellier, founded in 1593, is the oldest botanical garden in France.

Two letters of King John II prove that a faculty of theology existed at Montpellier independently of the convents, in January 1350.

In the 16th century the local triumph of Calvinism interrupted the somewhat somnolent Catholic school of theology, which was reinstated in 1622; but the rivalries of Dominicans and Jesuits interfered seriously with the prosperity of the faculty, which disappeared at the Revolution.

In better days, among Montpellier's illustrious pupils of law were Petrarch, who spent four years at Montpellier, and among its lecturers were William of Nogaret, chancellor to Philip IV, Guillaume de Grimoard, afterwards Pope Urban V, and Pedro de Luna, afterwards antipope Benedict XIII.