Sedes Sapientiae, The Patroness of College Education

Here is the original 13th century seal of the first university in history, The University of Paris.

It very prominently depicts Our Lady, the Most Blessed Virgin Mary crowned and enthroned in the center on high with Our Lord, the Eternal Wisdom, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Eternal Incarnate Word, enthroned also in her lap at her side.

SIGILLUM UNIVERSITATIS MAGISTRORUM ET SCOLARIUM PARISIUS

“[The University incorporates] the notion of becoming a professional intellectual, someone trained in a manner regulated by others who were trained in the same fashion.

“A consideration of visual images associated with the University and its nations provides a glimpse into how boundaries were circumscribed and how a flexible and emerging identity is made visually concrete.” In the adoption of its own corporate seal the University manifests its desire and right to act autonomously.

This is an image of the corporate seal of The University of Paris from the oldest extant copy of that seal, which is attached to a document from 1292. The seal is a guarantee that the document belongs to the collective body of the University. “[It] portrays a range of figures enclosed within an architectural framework that is distinctly Parisian in style and evocative of Notre-Dame cathedral. The Virgin and Child are seated in the largest uppermost niche. Flanking them are Saint Catherine [of Alexandria, c. 287- c. 305], one of the major patron saints of scholars, on the right, and a bishop in profile on the left. Below them are six compartments with figures of students and masters lecturing, disputing and reading. In the twelfth century, Peter the Chanter named reading, disputation, and preaching as the three requirements of the master of theology. He describes them as fundamental parts of a building: ‘The practice of Bible study consists in three things: reading [/"lecturing"] (lectione), disputation, preaching...Reading is, as it were, the foundation and basement for what follows, for through it the rest is achieved. Disputation is the wall in the building of study, for nothing is fully understood or faithfully preached, if it is not first chewed by the tooth of disputation. Preaching, which is supported by the former, is the roof, sheltering the faithful from the heat and wind of temptation.’ (Peter the Chanter, Verbum abbreviatum, PL 205, c. 25, trans. In B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed rev. [Oxford, 1952], p. 208)

“...The University of Paris first used a corporate seal from 1221 to 1225...[It was] Pope Innocent IV who, while renewing several scholarly privileges in 1246, gave the masters permission to use their own seal...[Without] a corporate seal, the University would have had to appeal to the Chapter of Notre-Dame to have their documents sealed, not a very desirable practice when trying to get around about the bishop.

“Smaller subgroups within the University, such as its nations, also asserted their own corporate identities in images.”

Charlotte Bauer, “Picturing and Promoting New Identities: The Medieval University at Paris and its ‘Nations’” in Mobs, van Deusen and Koff editors, Brill: Leiden, Netherlands, 2012, 120-122.