University of Constantinople Founded: The First State University
Theodosius II built the University of Constantinople in 425 because his wife told him to. Aelia Eudocia, a poet and intellectual herself, wanted a state-funded institution that could rival Alexandria. The emperor gave her 31 chairs—professors paid by the empire to teach law, philosophy, medicine, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, rhetoric, and Greek and Latin grammar. It was the first university with an official curriculum and salaried faculty. For over a thousand years, it trained the Byzantine bureaucracy. Every lawyer, diplomat, and administrator in the Eastern Roman Empire learned to think there. When Constantinople fell in 1453, its scholars fled west with their manuscripts. The Renaissance was waiting.
February 27, 425
1601 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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