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Colleges of Doctors in Bologna and Padua: Their Self-Concept and Representation in Studium and Town 2 Anuschka De Coster In the course of the 4th and 5th centuries, the colleges of doctors (collegia doctorum) in the Italian university towns gradually grew to be the most prominent institutions within the complex of the studia, while the student organisations or universitates were losing their power. These colleges, consisting of lawyers and physicians practising and/or teaching in town, claimed an elite position within universities and society through the rigorous selection of their members and a series of monopolies. Apart from the control they exercised over practitioners of their profession active in town, their most important and university-related claims were twofold: an exclusive right to confer doctoral degrees on the students, and the supervision of the appointment of teachers and the curriculum taught. The colleges defended these privileges and their social position as an essential part of their own identity and as an element crucial to their survival as a group. In many towns, in spite of local differences in the position the colleges actually managed to reach, this resulted in conflicts with potential aggressors, i.e. outsiders, but especially university professors who were not members of the college, university students and political authorities. Yet the colleges’ relation to these authorities was a very ambiguous one since, on the one hand, they often had been supported in building their position and, on the other hand, conflicts arose over their autonomy once it had been established too strongly, certainly from the 15th century onwards. In this paper these colleges will be regarded as social groups, developing strategies for their own perpetuation. In the first part we will give a general description of these colleges and a status questionis of bibliography and sources available; in a second part we will concentrate on the self- 8 Chapitre 2 image these groups tried to manifest, considering firstly the conditions for admission and secondly the main elements of this group identity. Thirdly we will regard the question of how this identity was actively created and defended by the rules the members had to follow and by the actions undertaken against offenders of the rules. A comparative study of the different punishments inflicted for violations of different rules—or at least the punishments the members were menaced with—advances the understanding of which regulations and therefore also which parts of the colleges’ identity were deemed to be the most important. The collegia considered here can, in effect, be compared to guilds;2 they were professional corporations of doctors in law or medicine. Professional colleges, which admitted all or a selection of local doctors in the discipline concerned and controlled all practitioners in town, were present in most Italian towns, also when there was no university. They were not necessarily linked to a university nor were their members necessarily involved in university teaching. In most university towns, however, the professional colleges acted as examination commissions for the local university, and they consequently included some teachers among their members. However, during the later Middle Ages and especially during the Early Modern period, some professional colleges of non-university towns were given the right to confer the doctoral degree by their princes, which only in some cases meant that they actually provided for the teaching of the entire university curriculum.3 For the two prominent university towns we will be studying here, Bologna and Padua, a clear distinction has to be made. While the colleges of physicians, indicated as the college of arts and medicine, acted both as examination commissions and as controllers of the actual medical practice in town, the lawyers charged two different kinds of colleges with the two important tasks. The first kind consisted of the professional colleges, containing all citizen doctors of law, which were only concerned with the 1. It should be clear that these colleges have nothing in common with the phenomenon of residential colleges, providing accommodation and courses for students. 2. The use of the term collegium instead of societas artium merely indicates that there is no manual but intellectual labour involved. S. di noto marella, “I Collegi dottorali nei ducati farnesiano-borbonici : osservazioni preliminari ,” G.P. Brizzi and J. verger (ed.), Le università minori in Europa (secoli xvxix ), Rubbettino, 1998, p. 354. 3. E.g. Cesena. See C. Penuti, “Collegi professionali di giureconsulti con prerogativi di addottorare in area estense e romagnola,” G.P. Brizzi et J. verger (ed.), op. cit., p...

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