UNIVERSITY FACULTY. - The expression can be explained historically in two senses. According to the first and simpler one, by facultas was meant the license (facultas) ubique docendi; but the term later came to designate the body of teachings in respect of which the facultas could be conferred.
It should also be noted that the term "university" did not indicate the aggregate of teachings imparted in several branches of knowledge, but rather the organized corporation of students or of professors (corpus, collegium, societat, comunitas, consortium or universitatis consortium or even communio consortium and simply universitas scholarium or magistrorum).
The term facultas came subsequently, and especially through the influence of the scholastic organization of studies, to indicate the body of teachings relating to a particular sector or art. Thus for law, divided into civil and canon law, thus 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 the doctors, the docentes of one and the same branch of learning, was also designated in this way: the collegium iuridicum, the collegium medicinae and similar bodies were counted among them.
These colleges could be separate and form a university in themselves. According to the concept of the university of studies of today they might seem incomplete. More often one and the same universitas was divided into internal sectors, to which corresponded as many colleges or facultates, thus preparing the way for the more modern concept of universitas studiorum. The various facultates or colleges had their own heads and a certain internal autonomy within the framework of the universitas. Typical is the division of this kind found in the University of Padua from the most ancient times of its history. Bologna too, to its original nucleus for the teaching of law (ars or facultas iuridica), added other artes in the early years of the 13th century, or facultates for medicine and for philosophy.
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Antonio Rota