UNIVERSITY FACULTY. – The expression can be historically explained in two senses.
According to the first and simpler meaning, *facultas* referred to the license (*facultas*) to teach anywhere; but the term later came to designate the entire body of teachings for which the *facultas* could be granted.
It should also be noted that the term "university" did not indicate the sum of teachings imparted in various branches of knowledge, but rather the organized corporation of students or professors (corpus, collegium, societas, consilium, coadunatio, or universitatis consortium, also called *universitas scholarum* or *magistrorum*).
The term *facultas* subsequently came to indicate, especially under the influence of the scholastic organization of studies, the entire body of teachings pertaining to a particular field or art. Thus, for law, divided into civil and canon, for grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and likewise for theology, medicine, or physics. In this sense, the term *facultas* is correlative to that of *collegium*. The organization of doctors and teachers in the same branch of learning was likewise indicated in this way: one spoke of the *collegium juridicum*, the *collegium medicinae*, and so on.
These colleges could be separate and form a university in themselves. According to the concept of the modern university, they might seem incomplete. More often, a single *universitas* was divided into internal sectors, corresponding to as many colleges or *facultates*, thus prefiguring the more modern concept of *universitas studiorum*. The various faculties or colleges had their own leaders and a certain internal autonomy within the university. A typical example of this division is found in the University of Padua from the earliest times of its history. Bologna, too, which began with a core for the teaching of law (*ars* or *facultas juridica*), added other arts in the early 1200s and faculties for medicine and philosophy.