Talk:University of Constantinople

Question

Does it still exist? 128.232.250.254 22:36, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah, found elsewhere on Wikipedia, it doesn't. 128.232.250.254 22:43, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Reply; It does exist. I am there right now! It is just not open for the public as the (modern) building that lies on top of it is privately owned. It is just a few 100 meters from the Blue Mosque and Sophia ... If you want to see it, go to 'Istanbul Hostel' and ask for the owner. He may show you the building. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.234.9.67 (talk) 11:24, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Recognized as University?

That is really curious, considering the word University did not even exist in the 9th century, I'd sure like to know who did the "recognizing". -- Stbalbach 03:21, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi my anti-Greek friend (yes I have been following your edits), this WAS a University, even if the specific word was not used it does not change the fact that in effect it performed the functions of what we would consider a university.

LOL. I don't hate Greeks. No signature? Why don't you login first and I'll clear up any misconceptions you have.

Anyway, actually it was not a University, except by analogy. A University is defined as being an *autonomous* institution. That means it is not owned and controlled by the state. There have been institutions of higher learning since the time of the Ancient Greeks, but we do not call them "Universities" (except sometimes by analogy). The term University means something, and has specific meaning and origin, it was first applied to Western European institutions that were *autonomous* from the state. This is all supportable in the academic literature, there is a recognized difference between Universities and schools of higher learning that came before. Calling a 9th century Byzantine institution a University is problematic, anachronistic and the "recognized as" part is really very funny - who recognized it, what does that mean exactly? It just shows a fundamental lack of understanding of where the word University came from and what it means. It's like cultures who use the word "Renaissance" or "Feudalism" outside of their historical context (13th C Italy and Medieval Europe, respectively) -- Stbalbach 14:41, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Source for first university

The source provided is not very good, it is an English professors web page - no peer review or any professional publication. I can find many more sources that say just the opposite. This one for example says "The first medieval "university" is usually said to be Bologna". The source also does not give any information on who called it a university and when? My guess is that didn't happen until long after it was destroyed. -- Stbalbach 15:39, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

It does say on 849 by Vardas. In addition, do not expect to see the english term 'university' or its latin original when refering to the University of Constantinople. As i have told u, it was called 'Pandidaktirion', the equivelent of the latin word. Apropos, the modern greek universities are called 'Panepistimio', yet, they are universities even though the english word is not in the Greek title... --Hectorian 15:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

About the source, i guess u are right... I'll search to find a better one. Hectorian 15:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Does "Pandidaktirion" mean Patriarchal? My source for the Byzantine university article called it the Patriarchal School. But in any case it is still a poor source, a better source is needed. I also think your making generalizations and analogies - based on the line of reasoning, every Byzantine school since the 5th century could be called a University - where do you draw the line, why this one and not earlier ones? Also the vast majority of English sources call Bolgna and/or Paris the first "medieval universities". Even if your right, this needs to be recognized - we report on what people do, not what we think they should do. -- Stbalbach 17:13, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

No, "Pandidaktirion" and "Patriarchal" have different etymology and none of them indicates or implies relation to the other. Maybe in that source it was named 'Patriarchal School' cause of its relationship with the Church (no need to repeat the relationship of all medieval universities with the Churches). No other Byzantine Institute has ever been called 'University'... this one has, cause this is what the word "Pandidaktirion" means (no other had this name in Medieval Greek-speaking part of Europe. so, no reason to include earlier/other Byzantine schools. since u say that the vast majority of English sources call Bologna and/or Paris the first "medieval universities", why is it Bologna first, and not Paris? I guess cause there is a source claiming that it was established earlier. There are also sources claiming that the U.of Const. was indeed a Uni. and was established even earlier. English sources are not the sole and only sources, not even for the English Wikipedia, especially when they contradict each other. Hectorian 17:31, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, there are differences of views - the Greek word Pandidaktirion meant University -- but in what sense? How was this University different from Bologna? If you look at its name "University of the palace hall of Magnavra Byzantine Empire" - this was a school set up by, maintained and funded by the "palace hall" ie. the state and the emperor. It was not an independent self-funded autonomous institution. This is why historians differentiate between Universities as we know them today - autonomously operating institutions - and those paid for and controlled by the state, which go back to the Ancient world. We don't call Charlemagne's schools Universities, or King Albert's schools Universities, they were state-run and controlled. I'm not sure Etymology is a good reason - words change meaning - what did "University" mean in the context of 9th century Byzantium versus 11th century Italy? I'm not trying to downgrade Constantinople's importance or deny it being called a University, it has many characteristics that one would call "University" such as a corporation of students being the primary one, but then of course so did older schools as well - how do we draw the line to the "first" University? I would not be surprised to lean that the word University was borrowed from Byzantine teachers who left the east for the west -- but the meaning of the word changed along the way because the institutions in the west were different from those in the east, indeed the Universities in Bologna was historically a break from the past it was entirely different and new in how it was structured and operated. -- Stbalbach 13:56, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

The University of Constantinople was indeed set up and funded by the state and the emperor. And so, the University of Bologna evolved from a Catholic monastery and was funded by the Catholic Church and the Pope... Drawing the line can be tricky, u know... --Hectorian 19:54, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

The students paid the teachers at Bologna. The students could hire or fire teachers. -- Stbalbach 12:58, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

• I replaced the ref

<ref name="texor">[http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/OriginUniversities.html The Origin of Universities]</ref>

by a fact tag, and i don't intend to apologize for having initially mistaken it for a project by a student with a poor grasp of scholarly standards. I can understand where it may make sense in a course or sequence whose touchstone is "Just connect", but it is unreliable, and frankly embarrassing as a source.
--Jerzy•t 06:26, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Just some general comments (long after the above posts!). First, Stbalbach keeps describing a university as a "self-funded autonomous institution". Sorry, but that is just not an accurate definition. Most modern universities in most countries are state-funded, often without student tuition, and often even state-owned. The degree of autonomy varies from institution to institution and from country to country, but autonomy is not a prerequisite for something to be called a university. Hence this criterion for judging the Pandidaktiron of Magnaura gets us nowhere.

Secondly, an institution does not have to include the word "university" in its name to be a university. This should be obvious. The word "university" did not exist in the 5th century, so we should not expect to see it in use! In fact, it is also not used today in Greece, as someone has noted above. Pandidaktirion and the modern panepistimio mean similar things to the modern word "university". Pandidaktirion is a place where "everything is taught". Panepistimio is a place for "all sciences". Same idea. It is pretty clear to me that the Pandidaktiron of Magnaura satisfied the same general reason for being as a modern university. It was a physical building where the formalized teaching of specialized knowledge was carried out by salaried instructors.

I don't believe we need to decide whether this WAS or WAS NOT a university. We only need to mention that it is considered by some to have been a university. The rest is up to historians.76.10.147.236 (talk) 21:31, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

The terms "Pandidaktirion" and the modern "panepistimio" would mean something similar to the modern word "university" only if "university" meant a place where everything is taught. It doesn't. "University", and it's Latin precursor universitas, refer to a form of corporate organization.

When you say "The rest is up to the historians" you seem to have missed a crucial point. In historical articles like this we just don't quote what anybody says about what was or was not a university, we quote what reliable historians have to say. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 22:51, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Dear fellow editors, my main concern is the quality of this article and not a claim to be or not to be the first or not the first university or not exactly but something else. My concern is that in the introduction of the article on the Pamdidakterion (pan=all , didakterion=school, so school where everything is taught) of Constantinople, contains information about Bologna!!! I do not care even if you decide to delete this claim, but Bologna's university or any other institution has no place In the introduction of this article. --FocalPoint (talk) 14:30, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Would replacing the Bologna reference with something like this address your concerns?

A few scholars have gone so far as calling it the first university in the world, although that term is generally reserved to autonomous institutions in which the teachers (or students) formed a legally recognized corporate body (universitas).

I suspect there should be material on the formal structure of the University of Constantinople. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 15:00, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I find your text better that the existing one (please put it in), but anyway I see two cases (I need to research this and I will probably not do it now, my apologies):

• Either the references on Byzantium all refer to it as " the first university in the world" and if they do (if it is mainstream opinion), we can just write that (experts on Byzantium consider it to be the....), without reservations (as we do not claim it to be the first university of the world accepted by everybody)
• Either a few of them support this, so let us write your very nice text somewhere further down, not in the introduction. Let the introduction conclude information which is widely accepted (or even widely disputed). Let out of the introduction information which is not supported but by a few.

Hoping that I have helped. --FocalPoint (talk) 16:37, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

References

Question

Does anybody have information (sourced) about the exact location of the university? Was it around Forum Tauri (Today's Beyazıt Square, in an ancient temple, Kapitol) or around the Monastery of Stoudion, Church of St. John the Baptist?--Z yTalk 13:28, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Go to 'Istanbul Hostel' (in Istanbul). It is close to the Blue Mosque and Sophia. Ask for the owner of the place and ask him to show it to you. It is there! Underground. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.234.9.67 (talk) 11:27, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

This is a digital Encyclopedia, can the article at least make a mention of it’s location? 85.148.213.144 (talk) 00:04, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

http://culturecityistanbul.blogspot.com/2017/03/magnaura-palace.html 85.148.213.144 (talk) 00:22, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Disputed

In my view, this entry is seriously flawed and should be completely rewritten. I don't have the time now to argue the case (Stbalbach has already done it pretty well), but let me at least give the following quotation from the corresponding German entry (which is itself not immaculate): "Die Bezeichnung "Universität" ist nicht zeitgenössisch und eigentlich irreführend, da es sich bei den Hohen Schulen von Konstantinopel auch nach 425 eher um Einrichtungen in antiker Tradition handelte als um etwas, das der westeuropäischen Universität vergleichbar gewesen wäre …" Totila (talk) 16:39, 29 June 2008 (UTC).

Second thought: it should be deleted and all links should be redirected to Byzantine university. Totila (talk) 16:54, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

If you look at this, then depending on the definition, Magnaura can be considered the world's oldest university.

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/OriginUniversities.html

Because of the above definition, there is some controversy regarding what is the world's oldest university. If we consider university simply as a higher education institution, then the choice is between Takshashila, Nalanda and Al-Azhar University, but if we consider the original meaning of the word (from the latin "universitas": a corporation of students), then universities would be a medieval European phenomenon with the oldest university being the University of Magnaura in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), founded in 849 by the regent Bardas of emperor Michael III.

Xenovatis (talk) 21:37, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Here are some more sources.

Britannica, 2008, 0.Ed., Education in Persian, Byzantine, early Russian, and Islāmic civilizations » The Byzantine Empire » Stages of education » Higher education

The rhetorician’s textbooks included systematic handbooks of the art of rhetoric, model texts with detailed commentaries, and specimens of oratory by classical or postclassical Greek writers and by Church Fathers, in particular Gregory of Nazianzus. Many Byzantine handbooks of rhetoric survive from all periods. They are often anonymous and always derivative, mostly based directly or indirectly on the treatises of Hermogenes of Tarsus (late 2nd century ad). There is little innovation in the theory of rhetoric that they expound. After studying models, pupils went on to compose and deliver speeches on various general topics.

Until the early 6th century there was a flourishing school of Neoplatonic philosophy in Athens, but it was repressed or abolished in 529 because of the active paganism of its professors. A similar, but Christian, school in Alexandria survived until the Arab conquest of Egypt in 640. For the next five centuries philosophical teaching seems to have been limited to simple surveys of Aristotle’s logic, but in the 11th century there was a renewal of interest in the Greek philosophical tradition and many commentaries on works of Aristotle were composed, evidently for use in teaching. In the early 15th century the philosopher George Gemistos Plethon revived interest in Plato, who until then had been neglected for Aristotle. All philosophical teaching in the Byzantine world was concerned with the explanation of texts rather than with the analysis of problems.

Because higher education provided learned and articulate personnel for the sophisticated bureaucracies of state and church, it was often supported and controlled officially, although private education always existed as well. There were officially appointed teachers in Constantinople in the 4th century, and in 425 the emperor Theodosius II established professorships of Greek and Latin grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy, but these probably did not survive the great crisis of the Arab and Slav invasions of the 7th century. In the 9th century the School of Magnaura, an institution of higher learning, was founded by imperial decree. In the 11th century Constantine IX established new schools of philosophy and law at the Capitol School in Constantinople. Both survived until the 12th century, when the school under the control of the patriarch of Constantinople, with teachers of grammar, rhetoric, and biblical studies, gained predominance. After the interval of Western rule in Constantinople (1204–61), both emperors and patriarchs gave sporadic support to higher education in the capital. As the power, wealth, and territory of the empire were eroded in the 14th and 15th centuries, the church became the principal and ultimately the only patron of higher education.--Xenovatis (talk) 21:32, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Britannica, 2008, 0.Ed., Education in Persian, Byzantine, early Russian, and Islāmic civilizations » The Byzantine Empire » Professional education

Teaching of such professional subjects as medicine, law, and architecture was largely a matter of apprenticeship, although at various times there was some imperially supported or institutionalized teaching.

Strangely, there is little sign of systematic teaching of theology, apart from that given by the professors of biblical studies in the 12th-century patriarchal school. Studious reading of works by the Church Fathers was the principal path to theological knowledge in Byzantium, both for clergy and for laymen. Nonetheless, religious orthodoxy, or faith, was Byzantium’s greatest strength. It held the empire together for more than 1,000 years against eastern invaders. Faith was also the Byzantine culture’s chief limitation, choking originality in the sciences and the practical arts. But within this limitation it preserved the literature, science, and philosophy of classical Greece in recopied texts, some of which escaped the plunders of the crusaders and were carried to southern Italy, restoring Greek learning there. Combined with the treasures of classical learning that reached Europe through the Muslims, this Byzantine heritage helped to initiate the beginnings of the European Renaissance.--Xenovatis (talk) 21:32, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Two DIFFERENT things

The University of Constantinople and the Patriarchal School were TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. The University of Constantinople provided secular / laic higher education (i.e. non-theological, as most people were highly religious at the time), in rhetoric, philosophy and law. The Patriarchal School of Constantinople provided theological higher education. Omulurimaru (talk) 09:50, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Merge proposal

University of Constantinople was an institution. Byzantine university refers to the higher education during the era of the Byzantine empire. I see no reason for a merge. --FocalPoint (talk) 20:21, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Article is anachronistic jingoism

It is wrong to name Byzantine schools/buildings as a university only for jingoism reasons, the goal is to exaggerate Byzantine history. It is also anachronistic, the university is a late medieval western European institute, Byzantine society never had such a system. Title should be rrenamed because it is misleading to the readers. DragonTiger23 (talk) 12:25, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Is this supported by something? Considering the inline citations the claim seems like wp:or concert.Alexikoua (talk) 14:03, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Education for both sexes

I removed the 'citation needed' tag, as the reference at the end of the paragraph covers the whole paragraph. The original reads:

"On the whole, Bzyantine society was an educated one. Primary education, widely available, sometimes even at the village level and, what is more, for both sexes - a thing unheard of in the Christian west until some 1,000 years later - ensured a high level of literacy. Female participation in culture, generally, was extensive, with many aristocratic women studying, engaging in research and writing. Scholarship was held in high esteem, fostered both in the great university at Constantinople, founded in AD 425, and in the important institutions of learning in such major provincial cities as Antioch and, of course, Alexandria." Jonathan O'Donnell (talk) 19:57, 7 February 2023 (UTC)