PADUA UNIVERSITY

Padua University has been selected by Roberto Amati in relation to the real history of european integration, then enlisted in the UNIVERSITAS category, accompanied by own fact SHEET useful to the comprehension, completed of historical MAPS AND IMAGES or with a direct linking to the related Blog contents dedicated to the aeternitas and the future of Europe.

	FOUNDATION
Year	1222 A.D.
City	Padua
Founder	Students
Where	Padua 'Commune' (Reich Empire)
Originary subjects	Universitas Iuristarum (civil and Canon law) , Universitas Artistarum (astronomy , dialectic , philosophy , grammar , medicine , rhetoric)

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	NOWADAYS
State	Italy
Name	University of Padua (Università degli Studi di Padova)
Seates	Padua , Vicenza
Degree programs	every scientific and humaninties disciplines
Library	University System (Library Centre, Digital library, Digital collections, Documenting Heritage, Virtual exhibitions)
Collegium	Board of Auditors
Alumni	University of Padua Alumni Association ('Patavina Libertas')
Famous teachers	St. Albertus Magnus , Baldus de Ubaldi , Pietro d’ Abano , Francesco Barbaro , Nicolas of Cusa , Andreas Vesalius , Galileo Galilei , Giovanni Pico della Mirandola , Francysk Skaryna , Reginald Pole , Angelus Silesius , Leonik Tomeu , Antonio Vallisneri , Giovanni Battista Morgagni , Gregorio Ricci Curbastro , Giuseppe Veronese , Francesco Severi , Diego Valeri , Concetto Marchesi , Giuseppe Colombo , Tullio Levi Civita , Alfredo Rocco , Livio Paladin , Luigi Stefanini , Enrico Opocher
Famous scholars	St. Albertus Magnus , St. Thomas Aquinas , Nicolaus Copernicus , Andreas Vesalius , Giovan Battista Morgagni , William Harvey , Constantine Cantacuzino Stolnic , Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia , Torquato Tasso , Erasmus , Ugo Foscolo , Giacomo Casanova , Ioannis Kapodistrias , Vincenzo Gallucci
Awards

Padua university is among the oldest of Europe thanks to its uninterrupted 800 years of activity! Indeed the University of Padua history started in 1222 A.D. as primary centre for development of medical knowledge, at that time included in the Republic of Venice that all of the historians agree on the extraordinary role played as forerunner of public health legislation. Let’s now to consider the role of the Padua University on the development of modern medicine: with the decline of the Roman Empire and the establishment of a dichotomy between the terrestrial and the celestial world and between the body and the soul started a downfall in the interest for the observation of nature. Gradually, after the year 1000 A.D., different factors contributed to a new attention focused upon the physical world: a relevant cultural event was the rediscovery in the Western world of numerous classical book.

In particular, the knowledge of the so called 'physical writings' of Aristotle originated a renewed interest in Nature in opposition to theological themes, so in that epoch the Aristotelian interpretation given by Averroé with the proposition of the 'double truth', allowed the believer to overcome the apparent contradiction between the revealed word and the scientific knowledge. As an expression of these renewed interest, throughout the course of XIII century the dissection of the human body began to be performed in the North East of Italy, namely in Bologna and in Padua: here we find Pietro d’ Abano, father of the Paduan Medical School and iconic character supporting the averroism, who made the first local dissection for forensic reasons. For all that concerns anatomical and physiological knowledge, strictly prevailing was the influence of Galen (II century B.C.), whose teaching was transmitted in an acritical manner, emblematically represented by the modality in which were carried out the lessons in anatomy: the professor merely commented ex-cathedra upon his text without assuming any direct role in the dissection. This latter was performed by the dissector whose role was purely manual and who was aided by a third individual, the ostensor, who pointed out in an orderly fashion the various organs.

With Venetian expansion, in 1405 A.D. Padua became the seat of the statal university of the Saint Mark’s Republic, where studies had assumed a philosophical direction that emphasized the empiristic content of the biological works of Aristotle and favored, as a result, the observation of nature, an essential aspect of the revival of the anatomical investigations. When one think of Padua University, immediately associate it with its long-standing tradition in medicine and anatomy, linked to great figures such as Andreas Vesalius, the 'father of modern anatomy', and Galileo Galilei, who once taught there. The university also proudly houses the world’s oldest anatomical theatre (1594 A.D.), a symbol of Padua’s pioneering role in development of modern University of Padua medicine application.

Padua University was one of the most prominent universities in early modern Europe, known particularly for the rigor of its Aristotelian logic and science. Established by a group of students and teachers moved here from Bologna but previously settled in Vicenza, it is the second-oldest university in Italy as well as the world's fifth-oldest surviving university: they set up a free body of scholars, who were grouped according to their place of origin into nationes, in which students approved statutes, elected the director (rector, or chancellor) and chose their teachers, who were paid with money the students collected. Defending the freedom of thought in study and teaching, Padua University became a distinctive feature which today lives in the atheneum motto: "Universa Universis Patavina Libertas".

The introduction of empirical and experimental methods together with the teaching of theory marked the dawn of a golden age during the XVI and XVII centuries, when Padua University became a workshop of ideas and home to figures who changed the cultural and scientific history of Humanity as Andreas Vesalius, founder of the modern anatomy, or the astronomer Copernicus and Galileo, who observed the skies here. Padua also vaunts the world’s first university botanical garden and a permanent anatomical theatre, built by Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente. William Harvey, who became famous for describing the circulation of the blood, studied in Padua and in 1678 A.D. Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia was the first woman in the world to be awarded a university degree.

But the fall of the 'Serenissima' Republic of Venice caused by Napoleon I marked the beginning of a dark age: Padua University fell firstly under the rule of the French and then the Austrians, passing through Italy’s tumultuous Risorgimento, which also affected the university. Only between late 19th and early 20th centuries the University of Padua expanded to include the faculties of Engineering, Pharmacy and Political Sciences, together with its traditional faculties of Law, Medicine, Arts, Philosophy, and Sciences. The advent of Fascism curtailed the Padua University’s values of free thought and cultural independence: its professors swore allegiance to the regime, after which the approval of Italy’s racial laws and the expulsion of Jewish professors opened one of the darkest periods in the atheneum history. Rector Concetto Marchesi shook the University from its slumber and at the height of the Germany occupation made a courageous appeal to the students to fight for the freedom of Italy: for its sacrifices in the name of Liberation, the University of Padua was awarded a gold medal for military valour, the only university to receive such an honour.

During the post-war period, Padua University opened other faculties of Education, Agricultural Sciences and Psychology and in the Nineties, new faculties of Veterinary Medicine and Economics and Business Administration. In the XX century, the University of Padua produced great literary figures such as Diego Valeri and Concetto Marchesi, engineers of the stature of Giuseppe Colombo (the 'master of celestial mechanics'), mathematicians such as Tullio Levi Civita, the jurists Alfredo Rocco and Livio Paladin, philosophers as Luigi Stefanini and Enrico Opocher, and lots of doctors like Vincenzo Gallucci, who carried out the first heart transplant in Italy. The new millennium brough some important new discoveries, particularly in medicine, biomedicine, engineering and aerospace technology.

Within Padua University, the Scuola Galileiana di Studi Superiori (Galilean School of Higher Education) is a school of excellence that combines traditional university education with a series of special in-house courses, comprising seminars and lectures by visiting professors of international fame: divided into 3 areas (Humanities, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences) it illustrates the techniques and methods used for scientific research and then provides students with a deeper insight into the field. The University of Padua offers lots of PhD opportunities for 3 years courses and its students have the opportunity to participate in Erasmus+ International Mobility programme based on 1800 agreements with about 500 partner institutions. Thus because the University of Padua, as part of its internationalisation strategy, promotes the development and activation of integrated international degree programmes aimed at awarding a double or joint degree (paths, curricula, interuniversity degree programmes), representing the highest level of internationalisation of the university system as the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degrees, the TIME Top Industrial Managers for Europe, the Double and joint degree programmes and the European Degree. The university of Padua triennal courses and many study programs are offered in English and Chinese languages.

Padua University is part of a network of historical research universities known as the Coimbra Group while it belongs to Arqus, the University Alliance of 9 european universities (Granada, Graz, Leipzig, Lyon 1, Maynooth, Minho, Padua, Vilnius, Wroclaw) as longstanding comprehensive research universities sharing extensive experience in joint projects and common profile as internationalized institutions with deep regional engagement in medium-sized cities: Arqus aspires to build on the member universities’ sound prior experience in cooperation in order to achieve a high level of integration in its members’ policies and action plans. The Association known as the Friends of the University of Padova seeks to promote and develop a permanent bond between the worlds of business, enterprise and manufacture, the atheneum and former students who have brought honour to the institution through their work and professional activity. To this end, the Association proposes, promotes and offers support (including financial support) for a range of initiatives within the sphere of Padua University: research and teaching programs; scientific, cultural and organizational gatherings; actions for the preservation, restoration, enhancement and growth of movable assets (teaching and scientific equipment included); actions designed to benefit deserving students and young scholars, as well as awards and other recognitions for university staff members and graduates at the University of Padova; initiatives of the Galilean School; all the other initiatives designed to achieve the general aims described.

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Not far from Padua and within the Republic of Venetia territory there has existed another important and ancient school in Vicenza: in 825 A.D. the charolingian Emperor Lothair I emitted the Corteolona Capitulary which established the emperial schools of Pavia (capital of the Regnum Italy) and Vicenza, where was founded a pubblic schola of law, rethoric and liberal arts, inherediting the tradition of the ancient Roman law school founded by the roman emperor Theodosius I: dependending from the Schola Vicentina were the students in Padua, Treviso, Feltre and Asolo. At the end of XII century it is attested also a Cathedral School in Vicenza, instituted by the local bishop Cacciafronte, who gave the theologus Lombardus the role of teaching. Some years later ancient acts talks about a laical Studium Generale in Vicenza, an event narrowed by the chronist Gerardo Maurisio and the historician Antonio Godi, confirmed by a document of 1205 A.D. conserved at the city historic diocesan Archive reporting a donation with earning by the San Vito church, part of the benedectine abbey cited by Godi, now in possession of the Cathedral Capitular and the scholars of the Studium Vicenzae: donation confirmed by a documenti of Pope Innocent III to thanks the students for having started the rebuilding of the church.

Probably that group of students settled in San Vito came from the University of Bologna, whose Commune limited their privileges and after their transfer to Vicenza established a ban and the confisque of goods for those teachers and students following the separated. In Vicenza those escaped found a favourable environment, strictly related to the cathedral canonicals, where was used the cerimony of 'doctorate'. In the Studium were for sure teached theology, mathematic, civile and canonic laws, essential disciplines in una commune that at time hosted more than 200 lawyers. Another document conserved at the city Cathedral Archive reveals that scholars and students representants nomined prosecutors for the donation of San Vito church and all the annexed goods, after they left Vicenza in 1209 A.D. probably towards Padua.

Nowadays it exists the Fondazione Studi Universitari di Vicenza (FSU) as expression of the needs for educational paths of universitary level directly related and connected with the territory towards the excellence, guaranted by prestigious Atheneum such as Padua (Engineering and Food Safety), Verona (Economics) and the IUAV of Venice (Design): an excellence that insures an inmediate occupation to graduates spreaded the near provinces, reaching circa 5000 students in 3 seats hosting in the city 4 residences, 2 laboratories and 1 dedicated to food safety.

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