.MEDIEVAL INSTITUTIONS IN SPAIN.

The list of medieval universities comprises universities, which existed in Europe during the Middle Ages. It also includes short-lived foundations and European educational institutions whose university status is a matter of debate. The degree-awarding university with its corporate organization and relative autonomy is a product of medieval Christian Europe. Before 1500 more than eighty universities were established in Western and Central Europe. During the subsequent Colonization of the Americas the university was introduced to the New World, marking the beginning of its worldwide spread as the center of higher learning everywhere.

There were many institutions of learning in the Middle Ages. Historians generally restrict the term "medieval university" to refer to an institution of learning that was referred to as Studium Generale in the Middle Ages.

There is no official strict definition of a Studium generale, the term having emerged from customary usage. The following properties were common among them, and are often treated as defining criteria:

• (1) that it received students from everywhere (not merely the local district or region);
• (2) That it engaged in higher learning, i.e. that it went beyond teaching the Arts, and had at least one of the higher faculties.
• (3) that a significant part of the teaching was done by Masters.
• (4) that it enjoyed the privilege of jus ubique docendi, i.e. masters of that school were entitled to teach in any other school without a preliminary examination.
• (5) that its teachers and students were allowed to enjoy any clerical benefices they might have elsewhere without meeting the mandatory residency requirements prescribed by Canon Law.
• (6) that it enjoyed some degree of autonomy from local civil and diocesal authorities.