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Guy Fitch Lytle, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance, The English Historical Review, Volume CXXII, Issue 498, September 2007, Pages 1080–1081, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cem184
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Paul Grendler's fine book now holds an honoured and helpful place on my study shelf devoted to medieval and Renaissance university histories (the 1936 Rashdall, Cobban, Courtenay, Stone, De Ritter-Symoens, Gabriel, Verger, the multiple volumes on Oxford and Cambridge, all of Emden's essential prosopographics, et al.). It is a worthy addition. Part I surveys the founding and early centuries of all the Italian universities, from Bologna and Padua to Messina and Parma. Here Grendler is understandably focused on ‘institutional history’, with one synthetic chapter on ‘The University in Action’, not really a social history, but on the internal functioning of university life, degree-granting, etc. Part II covers ‘Teaching and Research’, divided by individual faculties. Part III describes the ‘Recessional’ of these universities in the seventeenth century. A 52-page Bibliography is appended. It is no dishonour that Grendler was the third choice to write this book (following Paul Kristeller and Charles Schmitt—to whom the book is dedicated). Had either of those intellectual historians written it, there would have been more emphasis on ideas and controversies. More seriously missing is the social history that, I believe, should have been included in the mode of those historians more associated with the Past and Present and Annales schools of historiography. Lacking the preliminary work of A.B. Emden for England, perhaps such analysis of social origins, patronage and careers is just not yet feasible. But I should not end on a negative note: Grendler has produced a comprehensive book that will hold pre-eminence for many generations. And, despite needing a magnifying glass to read the footnote type font, Johns Hopkins U.P. has published a truly beautiful book and dustcover.
