University of Padua

Introduction

Along with such universities as Bologna, Paris, Oxford and Cambridge, that of Padua was one of the first to exemplify the idea of a Gymnasium Omnium Disciplinarum - an educational model that can now be seen throughout the world. Though the university's year of foundation is generally given as 1222, that in fact only marks the date from which there are records of a "fixed and publicly recognised university established within the city" and so the actual foundation can be dated even early, to a period when a number of professors and students had left the University of Bologna as a result of "offences to academic freedom and the failure to observe the privileges that had been guaranteed to teachers and pupils". Such exchanges of personnel and students - together with the similarities in the Statutes of the two foundations - reveal that Padua placed a certain importance on this link with what was the oldest university in the world, against which it was however very soon setting itself up as a rival (and even centuries later that rivalry has lost none of its edge).University of Padua was not founded as the result of a charter granted by pope of emperor, but as a "response to the specific social and cultural conditions that created a need for it"; and its motto of Universa Universis Patavina Libertas was well-deserved not only under the original Commune of the thirteenth century but also during the fourteenth-century rule of the Carraresi and throughout the period of Venetian rule of the city (from the 15th to the 18th century), all these different authorities guaranteeing full respect for the university's freedoms. The fifteenth century would see the beginning of more than three hundred years of growth in prestige as the University of Padua benefited from the protection of the Venetian 2 Republic, which was determined that this should be the only Gymnasium Omnium Disciplinarum within its territories. It was during this period that Padua made its great contribution to the nascent scientific revolution, with developments in philosophical thought, in the study of medicine and anatomy and the great discoveries in astronomy, physics and mathematics that are linked with the eighteen-year period that Galileo Galilei taught at the university (from 1592 to 1610).During the seventeenth and eighteenth century, as universities spread throughout Europe and ideas were exchanged backwards and forwards across the continent, the role of Padua University changed; however, it still maintained its unique position within the Venetian Republic, and the eminence of its professors meant it continued to hold a high place both within and without Italy. Amongst the figures associated with the University at this time, one might mention: Domenico Guglielmi, Bernardino Ramazzini, Gian Battista Morgagni, Gian Battista Poleni, Antonio Vallisneri and Giuseppe Toaldo, with the students including Carlo Goldoni, Ugo Foscolo, Giuseppe Tartini and Giacomo Casanova.The political role of the university was particularly apparent in the nineteenth century, when its professors and students took part in the local uprising of February 1848 against the Austrian occupation; and again in the First World War, Padua would find itself the centre of the zone of operations bordering on the Austrian Front. Just a few decades later, under its Rector Concetto Marchesi and its Pro-Rector Egidio Meneghetti, Padua University would live up to its motto by taking a leading role in the struggle against the Nazi occupation of 1943-45; and in recognition of the sacrifices made by so many young people who lost their life in that struggle, the university would later receive the Gold Medal for Valour, the only university in Italy to gain such an awardn recent years, the University has been able to meet the problems posed by overcrowded facilities by re-deploying over the Veneto as a whole. In 1990, the Institute of Management Engineering was set up in Vicenza; then the summer courses at Bressanone began once more; and in 1995 the Agripolis centre at Legnaro - for Agricultural Science and Veterinary Medicine - opened. Other sites of re-deployment are at Rovigo, Treviso, Feltre, Castelfranco Veneto, Conegliano, Chioggia and Asiago.Recent changes in state legislation have also opened the way to greater autonomy for Italian universities, and in 1995 Padua adopted a Statute that gave it greater independence. As the publications of innumerable conferences and congresses show, the modern-day University of Padua plays an important role in scholarly and scientific research at both a European and world level. True to its origins, this is the direction in which the Institution intends to move in the future, establishing closer and closer links of co-operation and exchange with all the world's major research universities.