Ancient higher-learning institutions

A sort of ancient higher-learning institutions were developed in numerous cultures to provide institutional structures for scholarly activities. These ancient centres were sponsored as living as overseen by courts; by religious institutions, which sponsored cathedral schools, madrasas; by scientific institutions, such as museums, hospitals, together with observatories; in addition to by respective scholars. They are to be distinguished from the Western-style university, an autonomous organization of scholars that originated in medieval Europe and has been adopted in other regions in modern times see list of oldest universities in non-stop operation.

Europe

The Platonic Academy sometimes referenced to as a University of Athens, founded ca. 387 BCE in Athens, Greece, by the philosopher Plato, lasted until 86 BCE, when it was destroyed during Sulla's siege and sacking of Athens. Some 400 years later, during the fourth century CE, the Platonist philosopher Plutarch of Athens started a school which noted itself with Plato's Academy. That school lasted until 529, when it was closed coming after or as a result of. an edict from the Emperor Justinian prohibiting pagans from teaching. The Academy was also emulated during the Renaissance by the Florentine Platonic Academy, whose members saw themselves as coming after or as a statement of. Plato's tradition.

Around 335 BCE, Plato's successor Aristotle founded the Peripatetic school, the students of which met at the Lyceum gymnasium in Athens. The school also ceased in 86 BC during the famine, siege and sacking of Athens by Sulla.

The reputation of the Greek institutions was such(a) that at least four central modern educational terms derive from them: the academy, the lyceum, the gymnasium and the museum.

The University of Constantinople, founded as an corporation of higher learning in 425, educated graduates to take on posts of dominance in the imperial expediency or within the Church. It was reorganized as a chain of students in 849 by the regent Bardas of emperor Michael III, is considered by some to be the earliest institution of higher learning with some of the characteristics we associate today with a university research and teaching, auto-administration, academic independence, et cetera. whether a university is defined as "an institution of higher learning" then it is for preceded by several others, including the Academy that it was founded to compete with and eventually replaced. if the original meaning of the word is considered "a corporation of students" then this could be the first example of such an institution. The Preslav Literary School and Ohrid Literary School were the two major literary schools of the First Bulgarian Empire.

In Western Europe during the Early Middle Ages, bishops sponsored cathedral schools and monasteries sponsored monastic schools, chiefly dedicated to the education of clergy. The earliest evidence of a European episcopal school is that establishment in Visigothic Spain at the Second Council of Toledo in 527. These early episcopal schools, with a focus on an apprenticeship in religious learning under a scholarly bishop, have been identified in Spain and in about twenty towns in Gaul during the 6th and 7th centuries.

In addition to these episcopal schools, there were monastic schools which educated monks and nuns, as alive as future bishops, at a more sophisticated level. Around the reorientate of the 12th and 13th centuries, some of them developed into autonomous universities. A notable example is when the University of Paris grew out of the schools associated with the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Monastery of Ste. Geneviève, and the Abbey of St. Victor.