Academic Mobility and Identity Construction at the Late Medieval Universities of Paris and Orléans

The present thesis explores the relation between academic mobility and identity construction at the universities of Paris and Orléans from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. Because of their prestigious reputation, the universities of Paris and Orléans were among the preferred destinations for academic mobility in late medieval Europe; Orléans had acted as the *de facto* Faculty of Law of Paris since the 1219 ban on the teaching of Civil Law in the French capital. Therefore, their communities were very diverse. The scholars held different political loyalties, spoke different languages, and had different cultural backgrounds. Differences predicated on geographical origin were constantly engaged with, and were undoubtedly the most visible and significant markers of identity in the university. On the one hand, the thesis analyses the construction, the expression, and the practical significance of forms of social identity based on geographical origin in the scholarly communities of Paris and Orléans. The argument is developed through three chapters, which reckon with the institutional, the personal and collective, and the practical dimension of identity. My sources come from archives in France, Italy, and Germany, are written in medieval Latin and the European vernaculars, and include texts produced by the scholars themselves or by the central and local administration and authorities, as well as material culture in the form of manuscript illumination. On the other hand, the thesis contributes to the current academic debates surrounding the development of secular and socio-political forms of collective identity in pre-modern Europe. Indeed, I propose an original trans-regional, comparative, and bottom-up approach to the question. First, adopting the perspective of the diverse communities of Paris and Orléans makes the research inherently trans-regional and comparative. Second, this is a bottom-up analysis, based on the tangible evidence of identity construction among the thousands of scholars passing through the two universities. Ultimately, I demonstrate that the identities articulated by the scholars were not – as often described in the historiography – 'national', but rather flexible, cross-cutting, and geographical, political, linguistic, and cultural in nature.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Barucci, Teresa

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Berend, Nora

• academic mobility
• identity
• late medieval
• university of orléans
• university of paris

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/c65ac946-1eec-4f26-b1c7-e3f542b4f23d/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.112291

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/374090