It was August 17th: Montpellier founded its first faculty of medicine

On August 17, 1220, Cardinal Conrad of Urach, apostolic legate of Pope Honorius III, granted the universitas medicorum of Montpellier its very first statutes, officially giving birth to what remains today one of the oldest university schools of medicine in the world, in direct competition with that of Bologna.

Medical schools gathered into a single community

Before this date, Montpellier already housed several independent medical schools, benefiting from the city's strategic position as a crossroads for exchanges between the Christian, Jewish, and Arab medical traditions of the Mediterranean. By granting them common statutes, the papal legate united these different schools into a single community, endowed with shared rules for the teaching and practice of medicine.

This administrative union marks a decisive step in the structuring of medieval medical education, at a time when medicine was still largely dependent on oral traditions and individual transmissions between masters and students.

A school that became a benchmark for several centuries

Thanks to its privileged geographical location between the Christian and Muslim worlds of Spain, the Montpellier school benefited very early on from the translation into Latin of numerous Arabic and Greek medical treatises, which helped forge its reputation for excellence throughout medieval Europe. Over the following centuries, this faculty attracted students from all over the continent, eager to train under the best practitioners of their time.

Even today, the Montpellier Faculty of Medicine proudly claims this title as the oldest university medical institution still in operation, a legacy of more than eight centuries that continues to fuel the scientific renown of the city.