Bo 2022 Project

“Bo 2022” is an innovative digital project that explores the history of the University of Padua by mapping the academic population who animated its cultural and institutional life from the foundation of the Studium in 1222 to the 20th century. Starting from the previous project PADU-A financed by the DiSSGeA, a team composed of medievalists, early modern and modern historians designed an open-access database by using Nodegoat, a web-based research environment developed to build, manage and visualise large sets of historical information. The project is also supported by the University of Padua, the Center for the history of the University of Padua (CSUP), and the University Museum Centre (CAM).

The “Bo 2022” dataset focuses on the students who graduated at the University of Padua during the past 800 years as well as on professors and other employees. Due to the different sources available for each historical period, the database is conceived in modular and separated sections. Each one contains a wide range of prosopographical information, that may include the geographical origin of the students, the scientific area of their studies, their religious belief, the title of their thesis, the final evaluation and many other aspects.

1. The Medieval Age section (1222-1405) maps all the people who had been qualified as having a relationship with the University during the 13th and 14th centuries by using mainly (but not only) the private charters edited by Andrea Gloria.
2. The Quattrocento and the “Paduan Golden Age” section (1406-1605) focuses on the students who graduated at the University in that period and were thus recorded in the Acta graduum academicorum Gymnasii Patavini.
3. The Modern Age section (1606-1805) collects the academic population of Padua from the last years of Galileo’s teaching period to the Austrian government’s reforms.
4. The Contemporary Age section (19th to 20th centuries) maps all the students who graduated at the University of Padua and, whenever possible, their tutors by using both the students’ files and the dissertation records produced, that were produced by each Faculty.

Beside these sections, the database also focuses on some cross-cutting aspects concerning more than one period: the copyists of medieval manuscripts (13th to 15th centuries) who declared in their writings a connection with the Studium of Padua as current or graduated students, and the hundreds of the students’ coats of arms that have been preserved in the Palazzo del Bo as well as in other buildings of the city (15th to 17th centuries).

Starting from the database, the “Bo 2022” research fellows aims to carry out research on the circulation of both people and ideas connected to such an important centre of high-culture and learning. Consequently, the project is strictly connected with the mobility studies and aims to give an important contribution in measuring the attractiveness of the University of Padua in both an European and Global perspective. Beside the database, three books dedicated to specific aspects of the history of the university will be published on the 800th anniversary of its foundation. The subjects include the mobility of students and its consequences on both their career development and the urban life of Padua during the medieval and early modern period; the intellectual, religious and social freedom guaranteed by the university (the so-called patavina libertas); women and the University of Padua.