Universitas studiorum: i miti di fondazione delle università

Jan Assmann, in a celebrated study of cultural memory, developed the concept of “founding history,” a concept of history structuring memory and identity in which founding myths play a central role as the main expression of the irrepressible need of every human organization to found – precisely – its own identity and to perpetuate it, legitimizing it through reference to a naturally mythical and glorious past. Founding myths of the universitas studiorum also reflect this irrepressible need for identity, specifically of the intellectual and scientific institution that, having developed in the medieval West, became one of the elective places of the irradiation of human knowledge in the world. Starting from an analysis of the ninth centenary of the University of Bologna, this essay aims to analyse the extent to which this founding myth - which has its roots in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and therefore squarely in the European Middle Ages - continues to influence the European higher educational area, thanks to the elaboration of the Magna Charta and the Bologna Declaration and, through it, the Europe of knowledge and science. This essay thus reflects on a Middle Ages in the modern world that does not end in the mythical-legendary dimension of a timeless and sometimes superficial Middle Ages but which takes advantage of its asynchrony to deeply connect the past and the present.