The compatibility between the Humboldtian principles and the Bologna reform programme is essentially contested. The article traces debates on the Humboldtian university and the Bologna process and explores theoretical, methodological and normative aspects of these debates and the relations between the Bologna process and the Humboldtian ideals. The assumption made is that the Bologna process has integrated a diversity of existing national patterns of Humboldtian origin in a new direction that needs to be analysed rather than postulated. The analysis focuses on historical contingency and gradual institutional change rather than the clash between two tightly integrated paradigmatic models of the university.