Setting: The Sword and the Cross

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Ramidel

I imagine that universities then have a somewhat uncomfortable place in Christendom, as students are clergy and thus permitted to study magic, but also...well, shockingly secular.

Universities were originally religious institutions of learning. Their secularization is a more recent phenomenon (although it's recent roughly in the same sense the United States of America as a nation is a recent development in world history). The time period of the setting matches up with them still being firmly religious in nature (and the nature of the setting leaves them less likely to become secular than in our own world, I believe).