Italian Renaissance universities were Europe's intellectual leaders in humanistic studies, law, medicine, philosophy, and science, and the prototype of today's research university. In the first book in any language to offer a comprehensive study of this most influential institution, Paul Grendler offers a detailed and authoritative account of the origins and development of each university. Among the topics addressed are the number of professors and their distribution by discipline, student enrollment and experiences, courses of study, budget and salaries, relations with civil authority, and the impact of social, intellectual, and religious movements. Grendler concludes with a discussion of the internal abuses and external threats that led to the decline of these institutions and ended Italy's educational leadership in the seventeenth century.