The University of Montpellier School of Medicine is a French medical school, part of the University of Montpellier, which trains future medical and healthcare professionals and researchers in the field of life sciences.
Founded in 1220, it is the oldest university in the world in terms of medicine, in the legal and conceptual sense of the term “university” as defined in 13th-century Europe, in the same way that the universities of Paris, Oxford, and Bologna are the oldest in terms of theology, liberal arts (Paris), and law (Oxford and Bologna). It is the oldest medical school in the world still in operation. It celebrated its 800th anniversary throughout 2020 and 2021 and was the subject of a national commemorative postage stamp.
Unique in France, Montpellier Medical School has agreements with two university hospitals (CHU): Montpellier and Nîmes. The faculty is located in the city center of Montpellier, with historic buildings (rue de l'École-de-Médecine, biology institute: boulevard Henri-IV), close to the hospitals north of Montpellier (medical teaching unit, university clinical research institute, new Arnaud de Villeneuve Health Campus: avenue du Doyen-Giraud), and has a branch in Nîmes (chemin du Carreau-de-Lanes), close to the Carémeau University Hospital.
Its motto refers to the Hippocratic tradition that formed the basis of medical teaching when it was founded: Olim Cous nunc Monspeliensis Hippocrates (“Once Hippocrates was from Kos, now he is from Montpellier”).
History
Middle Ages
Context Montpellier is a new city dating back to the year 1000, benefiting from the urban and commercial boom that marked Europe during this period. Barbarian invasions, followed by the spread of Islam in the Mediterranean, had caused a rift between East and West, with the two worlds remaining relatively separate, each living in isolation. Then commercial and cultural exchanges began to develop.
Montpellier was just a modest village with a small sanctuary located near a road to Santiago de Compostela, next to larger cities such as Nîmes, Béziers, and Narbonne, where there were Jewish communities with renowned doctors. The reasons for Montpellier's development were mainly geographical: the city was ideally located at the crossroads of land and sea routes, with its port of Lattes (then the most important port between Genoa, Pisa, and Barcelona), especially since the ships of Lattes had obtained from the Pope the status of “absolved ships,” meaning they had the privilege of trading with infidels. The latter were very close by, as they occupied a large part of Spain and the Balearic Islands.
Origins Many travelers, merchants, doctors, and scholars passed through Montpellier on their way between the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, allowing for the sharing of influences from the Arab-Andalusian and Byzantine worlds. A large medical community quickly formed in Montpellier in the 12th century, which was very rare in medieval Europe at the time, apart from the School of Medicine in Salerno, where medical teaching had developed since the 9th century.
In this context, medical education in Montpellier emerged from practice, outside any institutional framework, at the beginning of the 12th century. Medical practice was based on ancient Greek writings preserved by the Arabs. These were translated and enriched by Arab-Persian science (including Avicenna, among others), which reached Europe thanks to the Al-Andalus civilization present on the Iberian Peninsula and through Latin and Sicilian culture (with, for example, Constantine the African, a monk from Tunisia who translated Arabic).
In 1181, Guilhem VIII, Lord of Montpellier, granted “every man, whoever he may be and wherever he may come from” the right to “run a school of medicine in Montpellier.” In the entrance hall of the faculty's historic building, a plaque states that a third of Montpellier's first illustrious doctors were Jewish. This freedom to teach medicine undoubtedly contributed to the city's growing reputation, but also led to the spread of medical knowledge in a completely unregulated manner.
Organisation In 1220, the need arose to supervise, organize, and guarantee the teaching of medicine in Montpellier. Thus, Cardinal Conrad of Urach, apostolic legate of Pope Honorius III, granted the “universitas medicorum” its first statutes.
It is a legal charter granted by the ruling authority (the papacy), which precisely determines who can teach, how justice is administered within the university, and what rules govern relations between teachers and students, based on a balance of rights and duties between these two communities.
This founding act was part of an international geopolitical struggle for influence between popes and emperors surrounding the creation of the first universities in the 13th century.: Oxford (Kingdom of England, law), Paris (Kingdom of France, theology and liberal arts), Bologna (Holy Roman Empire, law) and Montpellier (Crown of Aragon, medicine). In addition to these political aspects, there were also ideological interests. In addition to the fact that medical education had undoubtedly become so deregulated since the edict of Guilhem VIII that there was a certain amount of charlatanism, the founding of the first medical university in history would also have been part of the war against Catharism, which is the most likely historical hypothesis today.
In fact, the apostolic legate who founded the medical university had been sent to Languedoc with a single mission: to combat the Cathar heresy by any means necessary. As Professor François-Olivier Touati aptly describes, the preamble to the 1220 statutes refers implicitly but unambiguously to heresy. The promotion of medicine by the Church, which is enshrined in these statutes, represents a complete paradigm shift in the Church's attitude towards medicine, which is even elevated to the status of a university science, whereas until then it had been viewed with great reservations and restrictions (until the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215). Furthermore, medicine, whose objective is to improve physical health, would go against Cathar ideology, and by controlling the training of doctors, the Church also gained a monopoly on medical practice, preventing any involvement of doctors with the Cathars.
An institutional framework developed around medical education in less than a century. On October 26, 1289, Pope Nicholas IV sent the bull “Quia Sapientia” from Rome to all doctors and students in the city of Montpellier, thereby officially creating the University of Montpellier, which encompassed medicine, law, and the liberal arts. "The degrees awarded by the University of Montpellier shall be universal in nature, as they are guaranteed by the Pope through the Bishop of Maguelone, his representative. The diploma awarded to graduates will grant them a license to practice hic et ubique terrarum, a formula that will be piously preserved until the Revolution in medical license letters" and will be adopted as the motto of the University of Paris.
However, the doctors refused to allow their school to become a mere component of a comprehensive university and decided to continue operating independently as a “university of doctors” (Universitas medicorum). In a unique event in the history of universities, the independence of the University of Medicine in Montpellier continued until the creation of the Imperial University (Université de France) in 1808, when it became a component (faculty) of that institution. This singularity probably explains the specificity of medical education in Montpellier, which, independent of other faculties, did not focus exclusively on medicine but instead integrated many fields of knowledge (natural sciences, philosophy, literature, arts, etc.).
Until the early 14th century, the medical university did not occupy its own building. Classes were held in the morning at the teachers' homes, consisting of reading and interpreting ancient texts, of which the teacher had a copy. In the afternoon, teachers and students would visit patients to practice and teach medicine “at the sickbed.” The university's activities (debates on various topics known as “disputes,” exams, thesis defenses, university assemblies, etc.) took place in the city's churches (Saint-Firmin, which was also responsible for archiving all the medical university's records, Notre-Dame des Tables, and the Salle L'Évêque, the Montpellier residence of the Bishop of Maguelone). In 1340, the university created an official course in anatomy using cadavers, one of the earliest in university history, which would make it famous.
The 1360s saw the construction of the city's very first university buildings, commissioned by Pope Urban V: the College of Twelve Doctors (or College of Mende, also known as the Pope's College, on Rue Alexandre Germain), ) and the College of Saint Benoît Saint Germain (initially intended for law and theology students, then a bishop's palace in 1536, and finally a historic building of the Faculty of Medicine since 1795,). The College of Saint Benedict was associated with a Benedictine monastery and had an abbey church with a remarkable silhouette (four square towers preceded by a porch with two cylindrical pillars),, which in the Middle Ages was the “university church” for all students in Montpellier (now Saint Pierre Cathedral).
The medical school enjoyed great prestige, with a reputation for having inherited the knowledge of Al-Andalus (Muslim Andalusia), and welcomed students from all over Europe. Its influence benefited from its proximity to Avignon (the papacy) and the teaching of illustrious masters, including Arnaud de Villeneuve and Guy de Chauliac. Clinical teaching plays an important role, constituting another distinctive feature of medical education in Montpellier, a legacy of the School of Salerno and, more generally, of medieval Arab-Persian medicine, which combined doctrine and practice, including surgery in particular.
Renaissance The Renaissance was characterized by a renewal of teaching at the University of Medicine in Montpellier, which was then a renowned intellectual center throughout Europe.
From the Renaissance to the end of the Ancien Régime, education was marked by the gradual loss of clerical control in favor of the state. The faculty acquired its own premises in 1469 and new rules were enacted by royal decree of Louis XII on August 24, 1498, establishing the "Royal College of Medicine".. This building was located near the current Saint-Mathieu church, on Rue du Bout du Monde (a popular phonological distortion of "Bout du Mont"), also known as "Rue des Médecins" due to the presence of the homes of many masters. It was also at the end of this street that the college of twelve doctors (or college of Mende, as it gave preference to students from Gévaudan, see above) was located, opposite which another college, the college of Girona (for medical students of Catalan origin), was built in 1452. During the Renaissance, the college in Mende took the name “college of the Pope” in contrast to the royal college of medicine (college of the King) built in the same streets. While the colleges of Mende and Girone were colleges in the medieval sense of the term, i.e., places of study but also and above all places of accommodation for less fortunate students, the royal college was the first dedicated premises of the university of medicine, bringing together all the teachers and students for lessons, botany (herb garden), and dissections. In 1556, the university became the first in France to have an amphitheater dedicated to the examination of cadavers.