University of Perpignan

University of Perpignan

Peter IV of Aragon (1327-87), having conquered (1344) the town of Perpignan and reunited to his estates the Kingdom of Majorca, of which Perpignan was the capital, compensated that city for its loss of power by founding, at the request of the magistrates, 20 March, 1349, the University of Perpignan, for the teaching of civil and canon law, and other arts and sciences. In the charter he praised "the deep learning of the professors of Perpignan". By the Bull of 28 November, 1379, the antipope Clement VII confirmed the foundation and privileges, and the university, in a petition addressed to him in 1393, declared him its founder: "Pater et Genitor". In 1381 John I, son of Peter IV, granted permission to the city authorities to build the university near the royal castle. The institution spread in Perpignan an atmosphere of learning, the study of law being specially developed. Theology was taught there during the first years of the fourteenth century, but it was not until 21 July, 1447, that the faculty of theology was created by a Bull of Nicholas V and it did not receive its statutes until 1459. The university disappeared in 1793.

RASHDALL, Universities, I (Oxford, 1895), 90; FOURNIER, Statuts des Universites francaises, II (Paris, 1891), 651-716; DENIFLE, Die Entstehung der Universitaten, I (Berlin, 1885), 515-17; VIDAL, Histoire de la ville de Perpignan (Paris, 1897).

GEORGES GOYAU