L’âge d’or d’avant l’Université: Le studium juridique orléanais au xiiie siècle

The history of the Orléans School began more than seventy years before it became a University. The Orléans studium in the thirteenth century operated with almost no institutional structuring. However, this lack of structures should not be seen as a weakness in the teachings. On the contrary, the last four decades of the century constituted a true Golden age for the School, during which its writings spread throughout medieval Western Europe and doctrinally superseded those of its great rival, the University of Bologna, in terms of doctrine. The Doctors of Orléans were at the forefront of a remarkable movement to renew legal science, significantly revitalizing doctrinal commentary, both in substance and form. The second half of the thirteenth century is also characterised in Orléans by the tremendous enthusiasm of several generations of students for careers in senior public administration, both royal and ecclesiastical.