nd Bologna would surely
have languished instead of flourishing beyond all others.

Just about the beginning of the fourteenth century {223} Pope Boniface
VIII., who was himself one of the distinguished scholars of his time,
determined that, besides the university of the Papal Court, which had
existed for nearly a century at Rome, but which was mainly occupied
with philosophy and theology and mainly attended by ecclesiastics,
there should also be a university of the City of Rome for the people
of his capital. This determination was reached only a short time
before the culmination of the difficulty between Pope Boniface and the
King of France, which eventually resulted in what has been called the
outrage of Anagni and the subsequent death of the Pope within a short
time. It has usually been thought, then, that in spite of certain
extant Papal documents creating the University of the City of Rome,
this university had not been organized before Pope Boniface's death,
and as his successor did not take his seat at Rome, but at Avignon, it
has usually been assumed that the University of the City came into
existence at most only in an abortive form. Denifle, whose History of
the Universities of the Middle Ages is looked upon as the best
authority in such matters, however, insists that a complete university
of the City of Rome did come into existence as a result of Boniface's
decree.

All during the time when the Popes were at Avignon this university
continued to exist, and in spite of the fact that at one time, as a
consequence of a great earthquake followed by a pestilence, and then
serious political troubles because of the absence of the Popes, Rome
had only something less than ten thousand inhabitants, the university
continued its work. Denifle calls attention to the fact that there are
letters of Pope John XXII. which show that he paid out of the Papal
revenues {224} the salary of a teacher of physic at the University of
the City of Rome while the Papal Court was at Avignon. It is rather
interesting to find the names of the two Popes, Boniface VIII. and
John XXII., whose Papal decrees are supposed to have prevented the
study of anatomy and chemistry, thus cropping up on unquestionable
authority as the founder and the patron of medical teaching in the
City of Rome. Pope Boniface VIII. is now generally credited with
having been the founder of the Sapienza, the medical school of which,
at the beginning of the sixteenth centur