The University of Bologna lays claim to be the oldest in Europe. According to one tradition it was founded by Charlemagne about 800, but the celebration in 1890 of its thousandth anniversary indicates that its modern historians have contented themselves with a somewhat later date. The jurist Irnerius, who gave instruction in civil law in Bologna between 1100 and 1135, was able to do for the school of law a very similar work to that done by Constantine a century earlier for the school of medicine at Salerno, and under his direction the school became a _studium publicum_ or _generale_. Bologna dates as a privileged _studium_ from 1158, when the _Universitas_ secured a formal recognition from Frederick I. Tiraboschi speaks of the university as having been in a flourishing condition as early as the twelfth century, and in 1224, when the Emperor Frederick II., in his zeal on behalf of his newly founded university at Naples, undertook to suppress that of Bologna, the latter is reported to have had no less than 10,000 students. Its great jurist of that time was Azo or Azolinus. The edict was revoked in 1227, and the schools of the university were, in fact, never closed. The University of Padua dates from about 1215, and that of Vercelli (in Piedmont) from 1228. In 1248, Innocent IV. established the University of Piacenza, with privileges similar to those enjoyed by Paris and Bologna. Pisa dates from about 1340, Florence from 1321, and Pavia from 1362. Galeazzo Visconti secured for Pavia from Charles IV. a charter with the privileges of Paris, Bologna, and Oxford. Notwithstanding the competition of so many rival institutions, and the special favour shown from time to time to certain of these by one prince or another (as in the case of the Emperor Frederick to Naples), Bologna not only retained its pre-eminence among the universities of Italy, but secured for itself a great reputation throughout Europe, attracting students of every nationality. In Bologna, Padua, and Pavia special attention was given to jurisprudence, while the school of Florence was noted for the liberal remuneration granted to its instructors in rhetoric and in belles-lettres. In this respect, however, Florence stood almost alone. The instructors in literature, classed as Humanists, were obliged for the most part to seek appreciation and remuneration not in the universities, but at the Courts of the cultivated princes and in the palaces of the more intellectual of the noblemen, and, fortunately for the literary life of Italy, literature had, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a popularity and acceptance among princes and nobles to an extent not known elsewhere in Europe.