Prague and Zadar: two European university centers in the 14th century

History of small nations is often absent from big historical syntheses, not always because it is prevented by the big ones, but because frequently small nations do not exhibit sufficient interest in it themselves. In order to be apt for dealing with history of one’s own people, regardless of its size, one needs to love it and explore it, and then do whatever is necessary for other people to get to know it. One can only love what is beautiful, valuable and important which is the case with higher education as one of the most beuatiful and most original products of the western European civilization which enriched and transformed geographical map of Europe as well as Europe as a whole and entire humanity perhaps more than any other institution. Its emergence as the highest scientific and educational institution usually represents cultural and scientific maturity of a nation, being at the same time one of the most important dates in its history.
General institution of learning of the Dominican Order in Zadar which existed and worked for more than 400 years became known in the Croatian cultural history only some 30 years ago owing to strange irony of fate. Nothing was known about it as nobody studied history of medieval school system.

Foundation of higher education institutions is not accidental but it is always a result of various cultural, political, economic and spiritual factors which can hardly be found at the same time and at the same place. That is why this moment is usually considered as a crucial breakthrough in cultural history which is written in golden letters. In the Croatian cultural history this moment happened at the end of the 14th century.

With increase of autonomy and process of emerging of national awareness need for educated people grew. Many states, districts and even cities wanted to have their own schools to educate professionals. Highest state and church power were decentralized and founding of schools was liberalized which was used by many to found their own universities.
At that period two new universities in two Slavic countries – Bohemia and Croatia joined the existing universities across different parts of Europe. The former came into existence as a result of cooperation between Emperor Charles IV (1346-1378) with Pope Clement VI (1342-1352) and the Dominican Order so that in 1348 the first university north of Alps saw the light of day in Prague i.e in central Europe. The latter was formed 48 years later (1396) in Zadar, as the first university not only in Croatia but also in south-eastern Europe. It was created due to efforts of Raymond de Vineis, master of the Dominican Order which had several such universities in Europe, without any intervention of an emperor or a king. He had approval of Pope Boniface IX (1389-1404) for his plan that the Dalmatian Province of his order should get its higher education institution. With that aim he first worked on preparation of sufficient number of highly educated individuals on the existing universities in Bologna, Padua and Prague who were meant to lead the new university, equal to other „public“ universities.
As for the general institution of learning in Zadar it was recognized as „public“ by the Church with the act of foundation which was never questioned by the public authorities which protected it and enabled its free activity. On the other hand a university acted freely in accordance with its statutes and started cooperation with other universities autonomously. In this work we are particularly interested in its cooperation with the Prague university in the early phase of their existence which is quite understandable if we know that Charles IV founded university of Prague in cooperation with the Dominican Order and with approval of Pope Clement VI.
On the following pages we will analyze circumstances of creation, mutual relations and importance of universities in Prague and Zadar in the earliest periods of their history. Therefore particular attention will be paid to these themes. These universities were created as a result of efforts of their founders not only to satisfy their needs for highly educated individuals but also to make up for gap which divided them from other advanced countries. Prague and Zadar were quite distant from one another, but not too distant for cooperation. Both universities had several reasons for mutual cooperation.