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Balthasar Hübmaier
[1481-
practically all that is known concerning this part of his life:
"Well grounded in the rudiments of grammar and the easier subjects taught, he came to the Freiburg high school and became a student there. It is wonderful to say with what circumspection and eagerness he acquired the doctrines of philosophy, how he hung upon the lips of his teacher and zealously wrote down the lectures—a diligent reader, an unwearied hearer and an industrious repetitor[1] of other hearers. So he obtained the Master's degree with the greatest honour. Many had advised him to pursue the study of medicine; to whom he answered: he would rather seek theology as the holiest mistress, and say with the prophet, I have long since chosen her, and will prepare her a dwelling in the sanctuary of my mind.[2] And although the narrow means of his father's house[3] was so embarrassing to him that he had to leave
- ↑ It was the custom in Hübmaier's day for bright students to give private lectures to their fellows, repeating the substance of what the professor had taught. Such a course was called a Repetorium, and the lecturer was a Repetitor. The custom has its analogue in the "quiz" classes in the medical schools of the present day. At the present time a Repetitor in a German university corresponds pretty nearly to a tutor in an American college.
- ↑ Hoschek gives (p. 120) a somewhat different version of Hübmaier's praise of theology: "Her alone have I chosen, her before all others have I selected, and for her will I prepare a cell in my heart." But for the original see Wiedemann, Dr. Johann Eck, Regensburg, 1865, p. 451.
- ↑ This reference to his father's poverty might be taken in itself to negative the above-mentioned conjecture regarding Hübmaier's family, but some sudden reverse might have overtaken a man hitherto prosperous.
