Abstracts 10 Oct 2015

Karine Crousaz (University of Lausanne)

The role of swiss political, religious, and academic authorities in student mobility during the sixteenth century

Abstract: The Reformation deeply changed the educational landscape in sixteenth century Switzerland. Apart from the university of Basel, already founded in 1460 and reorganized in 1532, four institutions of higher education were created between 1525 and 1559 in Zurich, Bern, Lausanne, and Geneva. These schools, often called Academiae, progressively offered a curriculum comparable to the art and theology faculties of northern universities but were lacking the papal or imperial privileges to grant academic titles. How did these institutions collaborate ? Did the political, religious and academic authorities encourage the mobility of students between them, and with other universities ? If so, with what goals and with what financial resources ? How were the mobility students selected and their studies overseen ? How important were the prestige of a university, its confession and the possibility to earn an academic title when it came to choose a place to send them ? What liberty did the students have in this choice, and in the pursuit of their academic and professional careers ? On the other hand, did foreign students have the possibility to get scholarships paid by the local authorities to study in swiss cities ? This paper attempts to compare the different ways these issues have been dealt with in Protestant Switzerland during the sixteenth century.


Willem Frijhoff (Erasmus University, Rotterdam)

A multifaceted educational landscape: the Dutch and their schools in and outside the Dutch Republic

The Dutch Republic was a confederal state in which every territory was entitled to follow its own cultural policy, within the boundaries set by the States General stating that the Reformed Church was the ‘ruling religion’ in the public space. However, this rule was observed rather differently in the provinces and towns. Thus, the intervention of the English King James I in 1612, furious about the nomination of the liberal, ‘Socianian’ professor in theology Conrad Vorstius, did not succeed. Equally, the creation of the Athenaeum of Amsterdam in 1630-32, of liberal Reformed persuasion, could not be prevented by Leiden University. In the lawsuit between the curators of Leiden University and the regency of the city of Amsterdam all the elements of the politics of interaction, political and administrative as well as religious, were brought to the fore. The liberal Reformed (Remonstrants), the Mennonites and the Lutherans managed either to establish public professorships or to found their own, tolerated school. The same holds for the Jewish educational institutions at Amsterdam. Finally, several private foundations complemented and corrected the established educational provisions.

As for the Roman Catholics, they comprised at least one quarter of the population, and the Dutch Republic was surrounded by several Catholic territories and states. Besides, the Catholics continued to consider the Southern Netherlands as their own territory and founded there their national colleges. Several solutions were at their disposal: attend the Reformed Latin schools and universities of the Dutch Republic; attend the schools in the Catholic border territories often founded especially for them; create Dutch colleges next to Catholic universities abroad. When in the Jansenist schism divided the Dutch Catholics, the public authorities supported the Jansenist, ‘national’ community by permitting the creation of an Old-Catholic seminary at Amersfoort in 1725. Moreover, private initiative, tolerated by the States, permitted foreign Catholic refugee communities to continue schools in exile.

In this paper, I shall first dress a general overview of the elements and the evolution of this complicated educational landscape, in which interaction between the public authorities, the Reformed Church and private parties played a leading role, and then briefly zoom in on some significant cases.


Anja-Silvia Goeing (Northumbria University)

The Politics of Scholarships in Early Modern Europe

Scholarships in late medieval and early modern times were grants to students regulated by contract. The grant givers usually considered students needy or worthy of support. The students got the money to study at grammar schools, high schools and colleges. Often the scholarships were tied to concessions relating to the period after the training, such as the obligation to serve in the Church. Funding was provided by the city magistrates, sovereign or other secular authorities, mostly based on sinecures and handouts. Also, individuals of both sexes, or institutions such as the church gave money or goods for scholarships. This talk delves into the question how scholarship policy fostered collaborations between local institutions and schools, and also, asks, if inter-regional exchange and collaboration was promoted.


David Lines (University of Warwick)

Institutions of Learning and Their Cultural/Political Interactions in Bologna, c. 1550-1750

The University of Bologna was one among many institutions of higher learning and cultural activity in early modern Bologna: these included in particular the studia of the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustinian Hermits, a college of the Jesuits, and coteries and academies such as the Accademia dei Gelati and the Istituto delle Scienze. This paper will consider what the interactions were between these various institutions, and to what extent their activities were influenced by the structures of political power, both in Bologna and in the Papal State more broadly. It will also give attention to the situation of individuals who straddled multiple institutions and how they may have influenced the exchanges of ideas and books in their time.


Thomas O’Connor (Maynooth University)

The Origin of Irish Continental Educational Networks in the Sixteenth Century

This article looks at the factors, domestic and international, which stimulated the formation of a network of domestic grammar schools in Ireland which fed newly established continental colleges in the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, and later in France, the Italian peninsula and the Empire.  The abroad network served its originating community not only by providing priests for the domestic church but also by acting as gateways to permanent migration.


Glyn Parry (University of Roehampton)

English Politics and the Politics of Mathematics Education


Yari Perez-Marin (Durham University)

The Circulation of Knowledge in Early Colonial New Spain: A Plural Landscape

This paper traces the rise of European-based institutions of higher learning in the early colonial New World, from the 1520s through the first decades of the seventeenth century. It discusses the foundation of the first universities in the Americas (in Santo Domingo, Mexico City, Lima and Charcas) not only diachronically, showing how earlier medieval models were adapted and transported to that part of the world, but importantly synchronically, within the broader context of institutions then being founded in emerging metropolitan centres within the confines of Europe. Indeed, statements explicitly inviting a comparison between the intellectual arenas of the Old World and the New are a frequent trope for first and second generation criollo writers, appearing in a number of texts that range from philosophical treatises, to poetry to natural histories and scientific literature.

My work also studies how the eventual dominance of the university and its role in managing social aspirations would negatively impact earlier experiments, such as religious indigenous colleges, which had initially provided a traditional humanistic education to members of the local nobility. Despite a period of coexistence between the two models, the rise of the university combined with a structural change in focus on the part of religious orders seeking to compete for the chance to educate European-descended elites, these factors would result in the displacement of prior templates. While the new conditions expanded the availability and the reach of education in the Americas, paradoxically, they would also help to cement mechanisms limiting the access to higher learning for groups increasingly marginalized on the basis of geographic origin and ethnicity.

Lastly, the essay considers alternate spaces that emerged often in relation to universities and religious colleges that enabled the education of women, some of whom would go on to play important roles in early colonial lettered culture.


Andreas Sohn (Université de Paris XIII – Sorbonne Paris Cité)

The Colleges and University of Paris, Professors/Teachers and Students, Religion and Politics. some Remarks on the History of Europe in the 15th Century


Simone Testa (European University Institute, San Domenico di Fiesole)

Geography, Politics, and Diplomacy in the Accademia Veneziana: Bibliography, Prosopography, and Networks

My paper answers the workshop question by presenting the Italian Academies Database (IAD) http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/ItalianAcademies/, the ideas that shaped it, and its intellectual context. Subsequently, I shall draw on the data gathered in relation to the Venetian Accademia della Fama – prosopography of the academicians, list of publications issued under the auspices of the academy, and documents related to the creation of the academy. In particular, I shall linger on the publication plan devised by the academy with regard to the category of Politics. As a subsequent point, I shall discuss the relationship between the Academy and Venetian institutions. Finally, I suggest that this academy is an example of the necessity to study Italian academies both individually, and as part of the larger social and intellectual movement that took place in Italy through the formation of a great number of academies, and their publications.