Established in , the University of Montpellier is one of the oldest universities in the world. The university is considerably older than its formal founding date, associated with a papal bull issued by Pope Nicholas IV in , combining all the centuries-old schools into a university, [ 3 ] but the first statutes were given by Conrad of Urach in It is not known exactly when the schools of liberal arts were founded that developed into the Montpellier faculty of arts; it may be that they were a direct continuation of the Gallo-Roman schools that gathered around masters of rhetoric.
The school of law was founded by Placentinus , from the school of law at Bologna , who came to Montpellier in , taught there during two different periods, and died there in The faculty of law has had a long career.
Professors from Montpellier were prominent in the drafting of the Napoleonic Code , the civil code by which France is still guided and a foundation for modern law codes wherever Napoleonic influence extended. The faculty of law was reorganized in The school of medicine was founded perhaps by people trained in the Muslim Spanish medical schools as Muslim rule in parts of Spain did not end until , when the Emirate of Granada fell no reference is available for the founding of the school of medicine ; it is certain that, as early as , there were excellent physicians at Montpellier.
It is the world's oldest medical school still in operation. The school of medicine benefited from a policy of the Guilhem lords of Montpellier , by which any licensed physician might lecture there: with no fixed limit to the number of teachers, lectures multiplied, thus providing a great choice of teachers coming from all around the Mediterranean region Guilhem VIII act of January The school was famous for arguing in the fourteenth century that the Black Death was caused by a miasma entering the opening of the body's pores, citing theories developed by Galen.
Doctors educated at Montpellier advocated against bathing because they claimed bathing opened the body's pores, making one more susceptible to the bubonic plague.
