The origins of the University go back to the VIII century AD thanks to the foundation of the celebrated Salerno medical school, an authoritative, prestigious, sanitary institution, which remained important throughout the whole Medieval Age. In addition to teaching medicine, the school also taught philosophy, theology and law. However, according to some historians, it was only after the second half of the IX century with the constitution of the Lombard principality of Salerno that it was possible to determine the establishment of an institute, which trained and produced doctors.