Hastings Rashdall (1858-1924) first published The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages in 1895. It has remained one of the best-known studies of the great medieval universities for over a century. Volume 1 contains detailed studies of the universities of Salerno, Bologna and Paris with in-depth analysis of their origins and constitutions, institutional development and specialised curriculum. It also includes sections on what a medieval university was; the learning and curriculum of the Dark Ages; the twelfth-century Renaissance; the respective places of Plato and Aristotle in the medieval curriculum; the development of Scholasticism; and the figures of Peter Abelard, Peter the Lombard, and John of Salisbury. Rashdall's study was one of the first comparative works on the subject. Its scope and breadth has ensured its place as a key work of intellectual history, and an indispensable tool for the study of the educational organisation of the Middle Ages.
