attracted to this new centre were mainly from within the radius of the university of Cologne, and its statutes were little more than a transcript of those of the latter foundation.
Wittenberg, The electorates of Wittenberg and Brandenburg were now the only two considerable German territories which did not possess a studium generale, and the university founded at Wittenberg by Maximilian I. (6th July 1502) is notable as the first established in Germany by virtue of an imperial as distinguished from a papal decree. Its charter is, however, drawn up with the traditional phrase ology of the pontifical bulls, and is evidently not conceived in any spirit of antagonism to Rome. Wittenberg is constituted a "studium generale" in all the four faculties, the right to confer degrees in theology and canon law having been sanctioned by the papal legate some months before, 2d February 1502. The endowment of the university with church revenues duly received the papal sanction, a bull of Alexander VI. authorizing the appropriation of twelve canonries attached to the castle church, as well as of eleven prebends in outlying districts ut sic per omnem modum unum corpiis ex studio ft collegia praedictis fiat et constituatur. No university in Germany attracted to itself a larger share of the attention of Europe at its commencement. And it was its distinguishing merit that it was the first academic centre north the Alps where the antiquated methods and barbarous Latinity of the Frank- scholastic era were overthrown. Frankfort-on-der-Oder,The last university founded in Germany prior to the Reformation was that of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. The design, first conceived by the elector John of Brandenburg, was carried into execution by his son Joachim, at whose request Pope Julius II. issued a bull for the foundation, 15th March 1506. An imperial charter, identical in its contents with the papal bull, followed on 26th October. The university received an endowment of canonries and livings similar to that of Wittenberg, and some houses in the city were assigned for its use by the elector. St An-
St. Andrews,The first university in Scotland was that of St Andrews, founded in 1411 by Henry Wardlaw, bishop of that see, and modelled chiefly on the constitution of the university of Paris. It acquired all its three colleges St Salvator's, St Leonard's, and St Mary's before the Reformation, the first having been founded in 1456 by Bishop James Kennedy; the second in 1512 by the youthful archbishop Alexander Stuart (natural son of James IV.) and John Hepburn, the prior of the monastery of St Andrews; and the third, also in 1512, by the Beatons, who in the year 1537 procured a bull from Pope Paul III. dedicating the college to the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Assumption, and adding further endowments. The most ancient of the universities of Scotland, with its three colleges, was thus reared in an atmosphere of mediæval theology, and undoubtedly designed as a bulwark against heresy and schism. But "by a strange irony of fate," it has been observed, " two of these colleges became, almost from the first, the foremost agents in working the overthrow of that church which they were founded to defend." St Leonard's more especially, like St John's or Queens at Cambridge, became a noted centre of intellectual life and Reformation principles. That he " had drunk at St Leonard's well " became a current expression for implying that a theologian had imbibed the doctrines of Protestantism. Glasgow,The university of Glasgow was founded as a "studium generale" in 1453, and possessed two colleges. Prior to the Reformation it acquired but little celebrity; its discipline was lax, and the number of the students but small, while the instruction was not only inefficient but irregularly given; no funds were provided for the maintenance of regular lectures in the higher faculties; and there was no adequate executive power for the maintenance of discipline. Aberdeen,The university of Aberdeen, which was founded in 1494, at first possessed only one college, namely, King's. Marischal College, founded in 1593 by George Keith, fifth Earl Marischal, was constituted by its founder independent of the university in Old Aberdeen, being itself both a college and a university, with the power of conferring degrees. Bishop Elphinstone, the founder both of the university and of King's College (1505), had been educated at Glasgow, and had subsequently both studied and taught at Paris and at Orleans. To the wider experience which he had thus gained we may probably attribute the fact that the constitution of the university of Aberdeen was free from the glaring defects which then characterized that of the university of Glasgow.[1] But in all the mediæval universities of Germany, England, and Scotland, modelled as they were on a common type, the absence of adequate discipline was, in a greater or less degree, a common defect. In connexion with this feature we may note the comparatively small percentage of matriculated students proceeding to the degrees of B.A. and M.A. when com pared with later times.Degrees taken at Leipsic,Of this disparity the following table, exhibiting the relative numbers in the university of Leipsic for every ten years from the year 1427 to 1552, probably affords a fair average illustration, the remarkable fluctuations probably depending quite as much upon the comparative healthiness of the period (in respect of freedom from epidemic) and the abundance of the harvests as upon any other cause:—
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Years. Matriculations. Tears. B.A. JI.A. Percentage of B.A s. M. A S. 1427-1430 737 1429-1432 151 28 20-4 3-8 1437-1440 715 1439-1442 199 50 27-8 6-9 1447-1450 808 1449-1452 274 (50) 33-9 1457-1460 1,447 1459-1462 559 81 38-6 5: 6 1467-1470 1,137 1469-1472 410 61 36-0 5-4 1477-1480 1,163 1479-1482 458 49 39-4 4-2 1487-1490 1,858 1489-1492 714 62 38-4 3 4 1497-1500 1,288 1499-1502 497 59 38-5 4-6 1507-1510 1,948 1509-1512 510 65 26-1 3-4 1517-1520 1,445 1519-1522 247 35 17-0 2-4 1527-1530 419 1529-1532 77 33 18-4 7-9 1537-1540 686 1539-1542 122 27 17-8 3-9 1547-1550 1,318 1549-1552 200 72 15-2 5-5 14,969 4418 672 29-5 4-5
General aspects of German mediæval universities.The German universities in these times seem to have admitted for the most part their inferiority in learning to older and more favoured centres; and their consciousness of the fact is shown by the efforts which they made to attract instructors from Italy, and by the frequent resort of the more ambitious students to schools like Paris, Bologna, Padua, and Pavia. That they took their rise in any spirit of systematic opposition to the Roman see (as Meiners and others have contended), or that their organization was something external to and independent of the church, is sufficiently disproved by the foregoing evidence. Generally speaking, they were eminently conservative bodies, and the new learning of the humanists and the new methods of instruction that now began to demand attention were alike for a long period unable to gain ad mission within academic circles. Reformers such as Hegius, John Wessel, and Rudolphus Agricola carried on their work at places like Deventer remote from university influences. That there was a considerable amount of mental activity going on in the universities themselves is not to be denied; but it was mostly of that unprofitable kind which, while giving rise to endless controversy, turned upon questions in connexion with which the implied postulates and the terminology employed rendered all scientific investi-
- ↑ Fasti Aberdonenses, Pref. p. xvi
