Nation (university)

Student nations or simply nations (Latin: natio meaning "being born") are regional corporations of students at a university. Once widespread across Europe in medieval times, they are now largely restricted to the oldest universities of Sweden and Finland, in part because of the violent conflicts between the nations in university towns in other countries.^{[citation needed]} Medieval universities were cosmopolitan, with students from many different domestic and foreign regions. Students who were born within the same region usually spoke the same language, expected to be ruled by their own familiar laws, and therefore joined together to form the nations. In the English-speaking world, the institutions most closely comparable to the medieval nation system are perhaps the collegiate system of older British universities or fraternities at North American universities, though the comparisons are imperfect. In Portugal and Brazil, there are fraternities called repúblicas, but these are merely residential groups and have nothing to do with place of origin.

In the University of Paris there were the French, Normans, Picards, and the English, and later the Alemannian nation. Jean Gerson was twice elected procurator for the French natio (i.e. the French-born students at the university) in 1383 and 1384, while studying theology at Paris. Also at Paris, Germanic speakers were grouped into a single nation.

The various nations in Paris often quarreled with one another; Jacques de Vitry wrote of the students:

"They affirmed that the English were drunkards and had tails; the sons of France proud, effeminate and carefully adorned like women. They said that the Germans were furious and obscene at their feasts; the Normans, vain and boastful; the Poitevins, traitors and always adventurers. The Burgundians they considered vulgar and stupid. The Bretons were reputed to be fickle and changeable, and were often reproached for the death of Arthur. The Lombards were called avaricious, vicious and cowardly; the Romans, seditious, turbulent and slanderous; the Sicilians, tyrannical and cruel; the inhabitants of Brabant, men of blood, incendiaries, brigands and ravishers; the Flemish, fickle, prodigal, gluttonous, yielding as butter, and slothful. After such insults from words they often came to blows."

The students who attended the medieval university in Oxford formed themselves into two constantly quarreling nations who were called the australes and the boreales. The australes originated from south of the River Trent and was the more powerful of the two nations. The Welsh were also considered part of the australes, along with scholars from Ireland and the Romance lands. The boreales came mainly from Scotland and the north of England.

The nations at Oxford were eventually disbanded in 1274 in an effort to maintain peace in the town. Despite this measure, conflicts between the nations continued. One such came on 29 April 1388, when Welsh students, who were according to the chronicler Henry Knighton semper inquieti, fought with their northern counterparts. The following year a chronicler says that the boreales ran amok in the town chanting 'war, war, war, slay, slay, slay the Welsh dogs' killing and looting as they went, before rounding up the remaining Welsh students and forcing them to kiss the town's gateposts 'goodbye'.

A similar division of students had been adopted at the Charles University in Prague, where from its opening in 1348 the studium generale was divided among Bohemian (for local students), Bavarian, Saxon, and Polish nations. When there was not a "natio" of a student's birth territory, students were assigned to one of those existing.

Due to the Decree of Kutná Hora in 1409, the three foreign nations were merged into one and three other votes were for the Bohemian students. The exodus of students who had belonged to the German nations led to a decline in the university's prestige and the creation of the University of Leipzig.