History II / The Renewal of Christendom, Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries
Practice question · Multiple choice

Universities appeared at Bologna and Paris as corporations of masters and students holding legal privileges. How does that legal form explain their durability?

Hints
  1. Ask what a body of foreign students has that an individual foreign student does not.
  2. The word "university" originally means a corporation, not a place of study.
Show the answer

D. A corporation outlives its members, holds property, and bargains with town and bishop

Why

The privilege that mattered most was the threat of leaving: a corporation could withdraw en masse to another town, taking its rents and custom with it, and several did. That leverage, plus perpetual existence and the capacity to hold endowments, turned a temporary gathering around a famous teacher into an institution that has now lasted nine centuries.

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