University of Paris

The University of Paris was described as the most celebrated school in Europe. Situated south of the Seine in 1386, it brought learned teaching and a student population drawn from across Europe into a city whose streets were also marked by congestion, factional conflict, and danger. The book’s index directs readers from Sorbonne to the University of Paris.

Setting and Identity

In 1386 the university lay south of the Seine, within medieval Paris. The city’s walls enclosed only about three square miles, while the university stood amid streets that connected lecture halls with taverns and other parts of urban life. Its location places it within the same city as the Palais de Justice, which housed the Parlement of Paris, though the university itself is not identified as a participant in the case heard there.

Teaching and Student Life

The university’s berobed doctors expounded Aristotle and Aquinas in Latin, described as the common tongue of the medieval lecture hall. Its students were freeborn males who had come from every nation. Their presence extended beyond the classroom: students filled the streets, taverns, and brothels with jokes and arguments, making the institution’s social reach visible in the city around it.

That cosmopolitan student life could also turn contentious. The text notes that students sometimes rioted against shopkeepers when they objected to local prices, and that they fought across national lines. It gives sharply specific examples: Germans hurled horse dung at Italians, while English students pelted Scots with wood taken from piles of kindling in the streets. The university thus appears not only as a center of scholastic authority but also as a source of youthful activity and disorder in Paris.

Place in the Parisian Setting

The book situates the university within a city of contrasting institutions and pressures: celebrated religious landmarks and royal justice stood alongside crowded streets, student rivalries, and threats from mobs, troops, and criminals. The University of Paris contributes a distinct intellectual and social dimension to that setting. Its international population and Latin teaching evoke a shared scholarly world, while the episodes of price-driven riots and national antagonism reveal how readily that world could spill into street conflict.