The event which has caught my eye for the 17th of October is the founding of the University of Greifswald in 1456, according to Wikipedia, the second oldest university in Northern Europe. I confess that at first reading I missed the “northern” and thought no, Oxford is the second oldest university in Europe after Bologna. However Bologna is in Italy and that’s probably Southern Europe. I wonder where the dividing line between north and south is for Europe? I just checked and Southern Europe is also known as Mediterranean Europe. As all of Italy’s coastline is Mediterranean, it is in Southern Europe, whereas France and Spain have both Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines so straddle Northern and Southern Europe.
I hadn’t heard about the University of Greifswald before. It is in northeastern Germany around 120 miles north of Berlin. It was founded with the approval of Pope Callixtus III and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III. In its early years, the university became a significant centre in the medieval academic world, fostering a vibrant intellectual community that attracted scholars, researchers, and students from across Europe and beyond. During the Protestant Reformation, Johannes Bugenhagen, a key reformer and theologian, was both a student and later rector, contributing to the university’s growth as a hub of theological scholarship.
The 19th century saw the rise of notable alumni like Ernst Moritz Arndt, a poet and historian celebrated for his nationalistic writings, and Caspar David Friedrich, whose Romantic landscape paintings left a lasting impact on art history.
Much as I love Wikipedia, their list of continuously operating universities includes eight universities in Northern Europe which were established before 1456. Greifswald isn’t even the oldest university in Germany as Heidelberg was founded in 1385.
Right, enough of Greifswald and its pretensions to age, what is the oldest university? According to UNESCO and the Guinness Book of Records the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez was founded in 859 CE and is the oldest continuously operating university in the world. If we want to examine ancient institutions of learning that have not been in continuous operation then the Mouseion of Alexandria, dating from the 3rd century BCE, sounds rather like a university to me.