| Abstract: | The origins of the medieval university appear to be twofold: on the one hand, the training in the liberal arts that took place in various sorts of schools and academies that can be traced back to the classical era in European history as well as to the golden age of Arab‐Islamic civilization, and on the other hand, the need to offer possibilities for practical training for a trade. The first type of training was by its nature reserved to a social elite. The latter, that in the medieval period was associated with trade guilds and apprenticeship systems, was for the working classes. The medieval university arose from the union of these two types of training and education as embodied in an institution that began as guilds of students and teachers and/or as cathedral schools. The result was the university that offered training in certain intellectual professions (theology, medicine, and law) but that required prior mastery of the liberal arts. As the fruit of this intellectual and vocational union, the university continued to absorb and to disseminate the principal intellectual trends of succeeding periods in European history, first Aristotelianism and then later the experimental sciences, finally, in recent years, taking on a major research and development function. |
