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Montpellier: Montpellier Faculty
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Montpellier is one of the few cities in France without a (Gallo-)Roman background. In the Early Middle Ages the nearby episcopal town of Maguelone was the major settlement in the area, but raids by pirates encouraged settlement a little further inland. Montpellier, first mentioned in a document of 985, was founded under a local feudal dynasty, the Guillem counts of Toulouse, who joined together two hamlets, built a castle and walls around the settlement. The two surviving towers of the city walling, the Tour des Pins and the Tour de la Babotte are later in date.... Montpellier came to prominence in the 10th century as a trading centre, with trading links across the Mediterranean world and a rich Jewish cultural life and traditions of tolerance of its Muslims, Jews and Cathars— and later of its Protestants. William VII of Montpellier established a faculty of medicine in 1180, recognised by Pope Nicholas IV; the city's university was established in 1220 and was one of the chief centers for the teaching of medicine.
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The University of Montpellier is one of the oldest in France, having been granted a charter in 1220 by Cardinal Conrad von Urach and confirmed by Pope Nicholas IV in a papal bull of 1289. It was suppressed during the French Revolution but was re-established in 1896. It is not known exactly at what date the schools of literature were founded which developed into the Montpellier faculty of arts; it may be that they were a direct continuation of the Gallo-Roman schools. The school of law was founded by Placentinus, a doctor from Bologna university, who came to Montpellier in 1160, taught there during two different periods, and died there in 1192. The school of medicine was founded perhaps by a graduate of the Spanish medical schools; it is certain that, as early as 1137, there were excellent physicians at Montpellier. The statutes given in 1220 by Cardinal Conrad, legate of Honorius III, which were completed in 1240 by Pierre de Conques, placed this school under the direction of the Bishop of Maguelonne.
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Montpellier ... has a youthful past. Unlike its Languedoc neighbours Carcassonne, Béziers or Narbonne, the city was not founded in Ancient timesbut several centuries later, in the year 1,000. At the crossroads of trade with Spain and Italy, close to the Salt Route, Montpellier rapidly became an economic and cultural capital. The brightest talents were drawn to its Medicine Faculty, founded in 1220 and considered the oldest in Europe. Later, personalities such as François Rabelais and Auguste Comte spent their youth on the banks of the Lez and the Mosson.
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It is not known exactly at what date the schools of literature were founded which developed into the Montpellier faculty of arts; it may be that they were a direct continuation of the Gallo-Roman schools. The school of law was founded by Placentinus, a doctor from Bologna, who came to Montpellier in 1160, taught there during two different periods, and died there in 1192. The school of medicine was founded perhaps by a graduate of the Spanish medical schools; it is certain that, as early as 1137, there were excellent physicians at Montpellier. The statutes given in 1220 by Cardinal Conrad, legate of Honorius III, which were completed in 1240 by Pierre de Conques, placed this school under the direction of the Bishop of Maguelonne. Nicholas IV issued a Bull in 1289, combining all the schools into a university, which was placed under the direction of the bishop, but which in fact enjoyed a large measure of autonomy. Theology was at first taught in the convents, in which St. Anthony of Padua, Raymond Lullus, and the Dominican Bernard de la Treille lectured.
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During the 1530's, both the astronomer Nostradamus, famous for his prophecies, and the writer, priest and bon vivant Rabelais studied medicine at Montpellier. The faculty later benefited from the establishment of France's oldest botanical garden Jardin des Plantes during the reign of France's king Henri IV. In 1553, the city gained a cathedral as the Bishopric was permanently transferred from Maguelone, whose abandoned abbey can still be seen overlooking the Mediterranean less than 10 miles from Montpellier. The Protestant Reformation... gained many converts in Montpellier as elsewhere in the south of France. As a major Huguenot (as French Protestants had come to be called) stronghold, Montpellier possessed one of the most beautiful Protestant churches of its time, but the subsequent Wars of Religion destroyed all religious edifices within the city walls except for the fortress-like Cathedral St Pierre. The Edict of Nantes of 1598, which recognized the right of Protestants to worship and granted them other basic freedoms in certain designated towns and cities, resulted in a brief period of relative calm, but conflict once more erupted twenty years later in the last of the religious wars.
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