University Charter

A university charter is a document issued by an authority to create, authorize, or recognize a university, historically issued by a pope, a sovereign power, or an act of government legislation. Charters became a formal requirement in 13th-century Europe: early universities such as Bologna, Paris, and Oxford developed organically without one, but by the 14th century either papal or imperial authorization had become essential to establish a new university, and the University of Naples, founded in 1224, is widely regarded as the first university deliberately created through a charter. A charter confers the legal authority to grant degrees and operate as a university, and historically it could also create a regional monopoly by preventing rival institutions from being established nearby; the medieval concept of a studium generale, a place of universal study, became a standard element of charter language establishing an institution's legitimacy. After the Reformation, individual states increasingly took over the authority to charter universities from the papacy, a shift that occasionally produced disputes, as when Dutch rebels chartered Leiden University in the name of the King of Spain during their war of independence, but which established the principle that civil authorities could create universities on their own authority. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/