Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/165

UNIVERSITIES AND OTHER CENTRES OF LEARNING 153 so great delight as in history ; and one of his favourite sayings was that any ruler who was not careful to preserve his own and his predecessors' history, or was indifferent to the character which he bequeathed to posterity, was worthy of hatred and contempt. He could be no lover of the public good who failed to utilise so fruitful a means of instruction and so strong an incentive to public virtue. Indifference of this sort, moreover, had been the cause of the ruin of many powerful kingdoms, communities, and states, where the rulers had been barbarous, inexperienced, and ignorant. Max Treizsaurwein relates in the ' Weisskunio- ' ! that when he came of age Maximilian spared no expense in sending out scholars to collect from chapter-houses, monasteries, books and learned men, information about the families of kings and princes, and ' all this was recorded in writing to the honour and glory of the royal and princely houses. . . . And wherever a king or a prince had founded any institution which had been forgotten, he revived the memory of it, which otherwise would not have been done. All the coins which any emperor, or king, or great ruler of former times had coined, and which were found and brought to him, he ordered to be kept and had them painted in a book, by which means it often happened that an emperor, king, or prince was brought to light again, with his name, who would otherwise have been forgotten.' For the same reason he has had recorded over again of every emperor, king, or prince, who has reigned from the beginning till now, all his good deeds, so as to keep them in memory. ' What a royal, noble 1 AVise king.