Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Nation (university)" in English language version.
It is important to recognize, however, that the medieval Latin concept of natio, or "nation," referred to the community of feudal lords both in Germany and elsewhere, not to "the people" in the nineteenth-century democratic or nationalistic sense of the word.
Although great importance has frequently been ascribed to this fact, it does not by any means imply that Copernicus ever considered himself to be a German. The 'nationes' of a medieval university had nothing in common with nations in the modern sense of the word. Students who were natives of Prussia and Silesia were automatically described as belonging to the Natio Germanorum. Furthmore, at Bologna, this was the 'privileged' nation
