The Dynamics of Learning in Early Modern Italy

“This is foundational scholarship at its best. Joining great scope with precise detail, Lines offers a sweeping account of an institution central to European education and thought over many centuries. Through his eyes, we see the dynamism, energy, and innovation that characterized life at one of Europe’s greatest universities.”—Ann Moyer, author of The Intellectual World of Sixteenth-Century Florence: Humanists and Culture in the Age of Cosimo I

“An impressively researched book on Bologna la dotta. David Lines puts to rest the image of the early modern Italian university as an institution in relentless decline. Instead, he demonstrates how the civic and religious government of Bologna, along with its dynamic community of learned professors, repeatedly reinvented the university to meet their needs.”—Paula Findlen, author of Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy

“David Lines skillfully reframes the history of the University of Bologna, revealing a dynamic institution with numerous links to cultural life in Italy and beyond. This book is essential reading for historians of science and medicine, intellectual historians of humanism, and anyone interested in understanding the social contexts of education from the late Middle Ages to the modern age.”—Craig Martin, author of Subverting Aristotle: Religion, History, and Philosophy in Early Modern Science