Note 12 — IX MONDINO AND THE MEDICAL SCHOOL OF BOLOGNA

It is probably interesting to note that the word universitas as used here has no reference to our word university, but refers to the whole world of students as it were. In the Middle Ages universities were called studia generalia, general studies—that is, places where everything could be studied and where everyone from any part of the world could study. Our use of the word university in the special modern sense of the term comes from the formal mode of address to the faculty of a university when Popes or rulers sent them authoritative documents. Such documents began with the expression Universitas vestra, all of you (in the old-time English, as preserved in the Irish expression, "the whole of ye"), referring to all the members of the faculty. The transfer to our term and signification university was not difficult.