Drawing on a lifetime of scholarship devoted to the history of schooling in late medieval and Renaisssance Europe, Grendler presents a magisterial study of the Italian universities... elegantly written.
(
Choice 2003)
A nuanced overview... Grendler offers a perceptive discussion of the effects of the Counter Reformation.
(Robert Black
American Historical Review 2003)
An important work of great erudition, an essential work for anyone wishing to understand Renaissance education.
(Duane J. Osheim
Sixteenth Century Journal 2003)
Erudite as well as entertaining; an instructive treatise as well as a useful reference tool for anyone interested in the topic.
(
Catholic Historical Review 2004)
For those interested in Renaissance intellectual history and the history of higher learning, this will be the quintessential study for some time.
(Mark Jurdjevic
Canadian Journal of History 2004)
No brief review can do justice to Paul A. Grendler's elegant study of Italian Renaissance universities. The Universities of the Italian Renaissance requires close reading and will doubtless become the definitive analysis of higher education in the period. Grendler blends the same depth of archival knowledge, familiarity with the secondary literature, organization, and clear writing that characterize his earlier works on Renaissance education.
(Michael J. Galgano
History: Reviews of New Books 2004)
Paul Grendler's comprehensive, methodical, and immensely learned study of the seventeen universities in Renaissance Italy is an enormous contribution to historians and scholars... A wide-ranging and authoritative study that will be a benchmark for years to come.
(Christopher Carlsmith
H-Italy, H-Net Reviews 2005)
This will certainly become the standard work on the subject.
(Darin Hayton
Cithara 2005)
This formidable erudite, beautifully presented and magisterial work is a reliable guidebook to one of the golden ages of university history. Between the early fifteenth and late sixteenth centuries, Italian universities were unrivaled in Europe except in theology. Grendler has produced a splendid framework within which to understand one of the great flowerings of intellectual life in European history.
(Diarmaid MacCulloch
History of Education )
A recognized authority on the subject of education in the Italian Renaissannce, Paul Grendler has produced a magnificent study of Italian higher education in the period 1400–1600.
(David A. Lines
Isis )
A vast, highly informative, and wide-ranging account... This monumental study, beautifully produced, crystal clear, and breathtakingly encyclopedic in scope, contains a wealth of valuable information and high-level scholarship.
(Jonathan Woolfson
Modern Language Review )
Will remain a basic source of reference for all future work on Italian Renaissance universities.
(Alison Brown
History )
Grendler's work is likely to remain for long an indispensable, and interdisciplinary, 'benchmark'.
(John Easton Law
Journal of Ecclesiastical History )
A wide-ranging and comprehensive survey.
(Jill Kraye
Times Literary Supplement )
Grendler succeeds in painting a picture of the Italian universities that is well founded in empirical data. His book is a great success.
(Jürgen Miethke
Journal of Modern History )
A magnificent achievement. Paul Grendler has written a stunningly comprehensive, detailed, and insightful history of the Italian universities from their origins to the eighteenth century. It will unquestionably become the standard work on the subject and remain so for a very long time. More than an institutional history, it is also a history of Italian culture over a span of five hundred years. Law, medicine, humanism, mathematics, philosophy, theology, and science all receive lucid and informative treatment.
(John Monfasani, State University of New York at Albany )
Grendler's research provides the Renaissance scholar with a guide book to the Italian universities of the period.
(Mark A. Lewis
Archivum Historicum )
This erudite work of scholarship will change the way that we look at the Renaissance intellectual history.
(Anthony F. D'Elia
International Journal of the Classical Tradition )
