Founding Documents and the Start of Classes Were Different Stages
Heidelberg University’s establishment depended on cooperation among Rupert I, Elector Palatine, the Roman papacy, and arriving scholars. On October 23, 1385, at Genoa, Urban VI authorized a studium generale modeled on the University of Paris, with the provost of Worms Cathedral serving as its chancellor. Permission did not mean that all teachers had arrived or that courses had begun.
On October 1, 1386, Rupert issued founding documents defining the university’s organization, privileges, and common discipline. This article takes that institutional foundation as its starting point. Early university records separately note an opening Mass in Heidelberg’s Church of the Holy Spirit on October 18, with teaching beginning the following day. Marsilius was not elected first rector until November 17. These dates correspond respectively to a legal framework, a religious ceremony, teaching, and self-governing organization; they cannot be merged into one day.
The Church Schism Encouraged Scholarly Migration
The Western Schism that began in 1378 drew universities into rival papal allegiances. Following the French Crown, the University of Paris supported Clement VII, while the Palatinate sided with Urban VI. Scholars who taught in Paris but held ecclesiastical benefices in territories supporting Rome faced a choice. The new university offered them a place to work after leaving Paris.
Marsilius, a former rector of the University of Paris, was appointed by Rupert in June 1386 to organize teaching at Heidelberg. The account of the opening also mentions Reginald, a Paris-trained doctor of theology, and Dietmar, an arts teacher from Prague paid by the elector. Foundation did not mean copying an existing campus; it meant combining migrating teachers, local political protection, and ecclesiastical qualifications.
Four Faculties and the First Classes
The founding documents established four faculties: theology, canon and civil law, medicine, and arts, requiring them to form a single university. The rector had to be chosen from among the arts teachers and replaced at prescribed intervals. Teachers swore to observe the privileges and statutes, while the university could adopt appropriate rules. Their union under the rector was intended to prevent the faculties from forming separate centers of power.
The four faculties in the statutes were an institutional design, not evidence that every discipline actually began teaching that day. The record for October 19 gives a more specific picture: Marsilius began lecturing on logic early in the morning, Reginald taught the Epistle to Titus later in the morning, and Heilmann lectured on the Physics in the afternoon. Scholarly networks brought the texts, interpretive methods, and teaching sequences of scholastic education.
References: [1]
Registration, Discipline, and Teachers’ Income
The admission oath established in November 1386 required students to uphold the university, obey the rector’s decisions in lawful matters, and preserve the union of its four faculties. Students suffering wrongs within the university were not to seek deliberate private revenge but to appeal to the rector or the appropriate authority. Registration was therefore more than recording a name: it meant joining a community with judicial and disciplinary obligations.
Supporting the livelihoods of teachers and students was equally important. The elector initially paid professors’ salaries and rents, while the university subsequently sought access to existing ecclesiastical revenues. A papal document of August 2, 1387, allowed clerics studying or teaching at Heidelberg to receive their benefice incomes despite absence for five years and instructed the relevant prelates to ensure compliance. Early university funding combined princely provision with ecclesiastical benefices.
University Buildings and the Property of Expelled Jews
The acquisition of permanent premises involved explicit exclusion and dispossession. Research in the official exhibition catalogue notes that Heidelberg’s Jews were expelled in autumn 1390. University teachers then discussed taking over their houses and synagogue, which was converted into a chapel of the Virgin Mary. On May 21, 1391, Rupert II transferred these properties to the university by charter, providing communal accommodation for teachers.
The charter lists houses, plots, and associated rights individually, including the former synagogue, cemetery, and named previous owners. The properties received exemptions from taxes and services, subject to return to the ruler if the university dissolved. Describing this as a princely “donation” must not conceal the preceding forced expulsion. The material consolidation of the teaching community and Jewish residents’ loss of homes and communal facilities were two aspects of the same process.
Preserving Books, Documents, and Knowledge
The accumulation of books also depended on specific gifts. After the death of the first university chancellor, Conrad of Gelnhausen, a document of 1390 recorded his support for establishing a college of teachers through property and books. Teaching texts did not simply appear: they circulated among clerics, teachers, and patrons. Such bequests transformed part of an individual scholarly life into a more enduring shared resource.
Book collections must nevertheless be distinguished from university administrative archives. In 1388, Marsilius placed the university’s privilege documents in a small casket inside its chest in the Church of the Holy Spirit, keeping them with its funds. Modern archival research further shows that monastic documents later acquired by the university have different provenances and cannot all be treated as its earliest administrative records. Tracing provenance distinguishes the respective histories of foundation, property expansion, and the accumulation of knowledge.