This collection looks at the disciplines and their context in the late thirteenth and fourteenth-century universities. Cambridge University, usually forgotten, is made the starting point, from which the essays look out to Oxford and Paris. 1317, when the King’s Scholars (later King’s Hall) were established in Cambridge is the focal date. To this new perspective is added another. Ideas, their formation, development and transformation are studied within their social and institutional context, but with expert attention to their content. Following an Introduction, making the case for the importance of Cambridge (Marenbon), and a study of King’s Hall (Courtenay), the contributions discuss Cambridge books (Thomson), Logic (Ebbesen), Aristotelian science (Costa), Theology (Fitzpatrick and Cross), Medicine (Jacquart), Law (Helmholz) and the universities and English vernacular culture (Knox).

The contributors are Richard Cross, Iacopo Costa, William Courtenay, Sten Ebbesen, Antonia Fitzpatrick, R.H. Helmholz, Danielle Jacquart, Philip Knox, and Rodney Thomson.