The University of Padua[i]
is located in the old City of Padua[ii](Padova
in Italian, but pronounced the same way) in the Po Valley north of Venice,
which is on the Adriatic, in northeastern Italy. The name of the modern
province is Venetia.[iii]
The ancient people of this region were linguistically different from their
neighbors. They spoke Venetic ,a Celtic
tongue, from whence comes the name of the province and name of the city of
Venice. The name, Padua means fields in
this language and may share a name origin with the Po river and the modern but
ancient country of Poland. Pole (pronounced Po’-lay) means field in all the
modern Slavic languages as well.
Interestingly, the western Celtic word for swampy area is “fen,” an
apparent cognate of “Ven
Padua
was a free commune in spite of Roman expansion until the second century,
B.C. Circumstances dictated that they
become Roman and the Veneti, people of
ancient Italy did just that. They were a Celtic people, like the Poles and
Bohemians of that time, (The Poles gradually became slavicized, but retained
Celtic music technology far into this century). A century later, the Veneti, people of
ancient Gaul were also subdued by the Romans under Julius Caesar. All these folk were sailors with technology
similar to that of the later Vikings, if Caesar’s (pronounced Kaiser, in Latin)
gallic war journals are to accurate.
The
way these names traveled appears to have been by the same mechanism as the
later migrations, when the Saxon tribes drove an axis through their Celtic cousins.
The Celts must have done exactly the same thing to earlier peoples (the
Basques?) as the glaciers retreated. We
know that the Slavs displaced Celts from Czechoslovakia and other peoples from
the Adriatic regions adjoining northern Italy.during the seventh century
A.D.—just as the western portion of the Roman Empire was expiring. But some
things survived, like a tradition of scholarship.
During
the Roman era, Padua was a place organized into a city and it follows that some
of the people were literate, even if they were immigrants from other
areas. People rarely change their
habits, and evidence of schools is
scant, but even one piece of hard evidence is sufficient—the place was part of
the Empire and produced Titus Livy.
Although he was educated elsewhere, he must have received more than basic
literacy at home, if the information that he wrote philosophical dialogues when
he was young is correct.
The
modern University of Padua began in 1222.. It was neglected politically at
first, but revived and has been in continuous existence since that time. It is currently regarded as a second-rate
school on the order of University of North Texas, by the mainstream in
academia. But it has produced its share
of scholars and teachers and has a history of real interest. Nearby is the
basilica of St. AnthonySt.
Anthony of Padua, who founded the institution in 1232. He was a Portugese
Dominican from Lisbon..
Padua
hosted Galileo,
a professor there. (Is his name derived from the term Gaul?) In celebration of the star-shot named for him, the
university maintains a small museum and it maintains the Italian state observatory. The site contains a picture of
the dais from which he
lectured. The great sculptor Donatello was
also a professor there from 1443 until 1453. And the University itself educated
Copernicus,
himself a Pole. And Andrea del
Verrocchio, Leonardo
de Vinci's first teacher was partly educated at Padua. On-line pictures show how fifteenth century students
appeared.
The
modern university has a website in Italian
and in English and
is worth visiting. The organization is
somewhat different than the American model, but it is clear that Americans
should be able to function there very well.
Mostly known for medicine in its early days, the university maintains
the oldest botanical gardens in Europe.
This is what they looked like during a trip by students in April, 1999.
[ii] Obstat, Nihil, ( February 1,
191) University of Padua. In.The
Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XI Copyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton
Company. Online Edition Copyright © 1999 by Kevin Knight. Remy Lafort, S.T.D.,
Censor [Online ] Available http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11385b.htm]
[2000]
[iii] The Veneti . (1994. )The
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia [Online] Columbia University Press.. Available http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/world/A0850636.html
. 2000, .