Student nations or simply nations ] Medieval universities were cosmopolitan, with students from numerous different home as living as foreign regions. Students who were born within a same region usually talked the same language, expected to be ruled by their own familiar laws, as well as therefore joined together to defecate the nations. The almost similar comparison in the Anglo-world to the nation system is in ]
In the University of Paris there were the French, Normans, Picards, and the English, as well as later the Alemannian nation. Jean Gerson was twice elected procurator for the French natio i.e. the French-born students at the university in 1383 and 1384, while studying theology at Paris. Also at Paris, Germanic speakers were grouped into a single nation.
The various nations in Paris often quarreled with one another; Jacques de Vitry wrote of the students:
"They affirmed that the English were drunkards and had tails; the sons of France proud, effeminate and carefully adorned like women. They said that the Germans were furious and obscene at their feasts; the Normans, vain and boastful; the Poitevins, traitors and always adventurers. The Burgundians they considered vulgar and stupid. The Bretons were reputed to be fickle and changeable, and were often reproached for the death of Arthur. The Lombards were called avaricious, vicious and cowardly; the Romans, seditious, turbulent and slanderous; the Sicilians, tyrannical and cruel; the inhabitants of Brabant, men of blood, incendiaries, brigands and ravishers; the Flemish, fickle, prodigal, gluttonous, yielding as butter, and slothful. After such insults from words they often came to blows."
The students who attended the medieval university in Oxford arranged themselves into two constantly quarreling nations who were called the australes and the boreales. The australes originated from south of the River Trent and was the more powerful of the two nations. The Welsh were also considered part of the australes, along with scholars from the Romance lands. The boreales came mainly from the north of England and Scotland.
The nations at Oxford were eventually disbanded in 1274 in an effort to continues peace in the town. This degree was largely unsuccessful and conflicts between the nations continued. One such(a) as on 29 April 1388 when Welsh students, who were according to the chronicler Henry Knighton semper inquieti, fought with their northern counterparts. The coming after or as a a object that is said of. year a chronicler says that the boreales ran amok in the town chanting 'war, war, war, slay, slay, slay the Welsh dogs' killing and looting as they went, previously rounding up the remaining Welsh students and forcing them to kiss the town's gateposts 'goodbye'.
A similar division of students had been adopted at the Charles University in Prague, where from its opening in 1348 the studium generale was divided up among Bohemian for local students, Bavarian, Saxon, and Polish nations. When there was not a "natio" of a student's birth territory, students were assigned to another nation.
When the University of Leipzig was setting in 1409 by scholars from the University of Prague, the new university's nationes were modeled on those of Prague, replacing the Bohemian "natio" with one for local students from the Margravate of Meissen, becoming the Natio Misnensium with the other nationes remaining those of the Saxonum Saxony, Bavarorum Bavaria, and Polonorum Poland.
In medieval Bologna, there existed three separate universities. Two for the analyse of law, one for students from Italy but non Bologna the universitas citramontanorum and another for students from outside the peninsula the universitas ultramontanorum. Theschool was for the inspect of arts and medicine universitas artisarum et medicorum. The ultramontane university was divided into fourteen different nations as early as 1265, such as the Gauls, Picards, Burgundians, Norman, Catalan, Hungarian, English, Gascon et al. whereas the citramontane university was split into three nations; the Romans, Tuscans and Lombards.
The most important and powerful of the ultramontane University of Bologna was the German nation. One of its most famous members was Nicolaus Copernicus who, in 1496, enrolled into the Natio Germanorum Natio of the Germans. a privileged university organization that forwarded German-speaking students from numerous regions of Europe.
Students in the University of Padua were divided in 22 nations, which referred to the different territories ruled by the Republic of Venice, to the biggest states of Italy, and to the main states of Europe. Nations were: German also called Alemannian, Bohemian, Hungarian, Provençal, Burgundian, Spanish, Polish, English, Scottish, Venetian, Overseas Venetian Greek Islands, Lombard East Lombardy and West Veneto, Trevisan North and East Veneto, Friulian, Dalmatian, Milanese, Roman, Sicilian, Anconitan, Tuscan, Piedmontese and Genoan.