Just how medieval is the modern university? From their medieval beginnings in Western Europe, universities have remained monolithic and static entities, renovating themselves just enough to avoid massive interventions by the state or the church. Like parliamentary democracies, they function just well enough that while feelings of despair are frequent, and anticipation of imminent collapse constant, they continue. In the modern era, as universities face a new set of challenges, this book asks if there is not some value in pondering the medieval university, and the continuities that exist as much as do the fractures.