Passage 3                          

Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following passage.

The universities from which today’s universities are descendents were founded in the Middle Ages. They were established either by corporations of students wanting to learn, as in Italy, or by teachers wanting to teach, as in France. Corporations that had special legal or customary privileges for the purpose of carrying out the intentions of the incorporators were common in those days. The university corporations of the Middle Ages at the height of their power were not responsible to anybody, and could not be punished by any authorities. They claimed, and made good their claim, complete independence of all religious and nonreligious control. The American university was, however, at first a corporation formed by a religious group or by the state for the purposes of the group.

The American university in the seventeenth century was much closer to the American university today than to the university in the Middle Ages. The Puritan communities needed ministers and professional men and so they established universities to provide them. Later, religious groups built universities in order to extend their own influence. For example, the University of Chicago was founded by devout (虔诚的) Baptists to combat the rising tide of Methodism in the Middle West and Shakers in the East. The president and the trustees of the University were required to have the proper religious relations in order to keep the University on the right path. Fortunately, the combination of John D, Rockefeller, William Rainey Harper, and the enlightened wing of the Baptist Church preserved the university from too narrow an interpretation of its purpose.

French universities in the Middle Ages were founded by ______.