<P> Among the earliest universities of this type were the University of Bologna (1088), University of Paris (teach . mid-11th century, recogn. 1150), University of Oxford (teach . 1096, recogn. 1167), University of Modena (1175), University of Palencia (1208), University of Cambridge (1209), University of Salamanca (1218), University of Montpellier (1220), University of Padua (1222), University of Toulouse (1229), University of Orleans (1235), University of Siena (1240), University of Valladolid (1241) University of Northampton (1261), University of Coimbra (1288), University of Pisa (1343), Charles University in Prague (1348), Jagiellonian University (1364), University of Vienna (1365), Heidelberg University (1386) and the University of St Andrews (1413) begun as private corporations of teachers and their pupils . </P> <P> In many cases universities petitioned secular power for privileges and this became a model . Emperor Frederick I in Authentica Habita (1158) gave the first privileges to students in Bologna . Another step was when Pope Alexander III in 1179 "forbidding masters of the church schools to take fees for granting the license to teach (licentia docendi), and obliging them to give license to properly qualified teachers". Hastings Rashdall considered that the integrity of a university was only preserved in such an internally regulated corporation, which protected the scholars from external intervention . This independently evolving organization was absent in the universities of southern Italy and Spain, which served the bureaucratic needs of monarchs--and were, according to Rashdall, their artificial creations . </P> <P> The University of Paris was formally recognized when Pope Gregory IX issued the bull Parens scientiarum (1231). This was a revolutionary step: studium generale (university) and universitas (corporation of students or teachers) existed even before, but after the issuing of the bull, they attained autonomy . "(T) he papal bull of 1233, which stipulated that anyone admitted as a teacher in Toulouse had the right to teach everywhere without further examinations (ius ubique docendi), in time, transformed this privilege into the single most important defining characteristic of the university and made it the symbol of its institutional autonomy...By the year 1292, even the two oldest universities, Bologna and Paris, felt the need to seek similar bulls from Pope Nicholas IV ." </P> <P> By the 13th century, almost half of the highest offices in the Church were occupied by degreed masters (abbots, archbishops, cardinals), and over one - third of the second - highest offices were occupied by masters . In addition, some of the greatest theologians of the High Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas and Robert Grosseteste, were products of the medieval university . </P>

How were medieval universities different than byzantine and islamic schools