Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/137

UNIVERSITIES AND OTHER CENTRES OF LEARNING 125 He never took book or pen in hand without having first communed in prayer with God. He had read and meditated on the Scriptures so much that he knew them almost by heart. His mind was as pure as that of a child, and it was his greatest delight and refreshment when wearied with long labour to play with little chil- dren.' When he died, universally lamented, in 1496, Se- bastian Brant was the only one of all his many friends outside the monastery who was allowed to be present at his deathbed. Sebastian Brant, born at Strasburg in 1457, com- menced his career in 1489, at Basle, as professor of law, and in conjunction with Ulrich Krafft (the teacher of Ulrich Zasius) did much to increase interest in the study of jurisprudence at the university. He taught simultaneously, to the immense satisfaction of the students, as professor of classics, and gained repute by his Latin poems, and by editing the works of several writers who had aimed at the propagation of the study of Christian Humanities. Science and literature are specially indebted to him for the first complete edition of the works of Petrarch, whom he celebrated in a noble Latin poem. He also gave his attention to the pub- lishing of several ancient books on jurisprudence, and interested himself deeply in the bringing out of the ' Bible Concordance of 1496,' and in the six-volume Bible with the glossary of Nicholas of Lyra, published at Basle in 1498. Brant's nature and character were by no means merely scholastic and theoretical. He worked always for practical ends, and in all the movements of the time it was essentially the political and moral aspects and