Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/99

UNIVERSITIES AND OTHER CENTRES OF LEARNING 87 years — viz. that of Greifswald in 1456, those of Basle and Freiburg in 1460, of Ingolstadt in 1472, of Treves in 1473, 1 of Tubingen and Mentz in 1477, of Wittenberg in 1402, and of Frankfort-on-the-Oder in 1506. These universities were meant to be not only the highest schools of secular, but also of religious learning. They were to serve for the protection and propagation of the faith. Hence in most cases their charters were derived from the Pope ; but the Emperors also, as the champions of Christendom, enjoyed the right (of which they often made use) of establishing similar institutions. From the nature of their constitution the universities were recognised as ecclesiastical authorities. Their whole organisation was permeated with the clerical spirit. It was held that there were two orders of science — the natural, which comprises everything that could be grasped by reason, and the supernatural, which com- prises all the truths made known by revelation — and that both these should be cultivated in the universities. As the Church is a living unity, which takes in the whole being of man and encompasses the highest dignity of human nature, so must science also strive towards living unity and towards that which is the central point of all higher life ; it must return to God, to the original source whence it proceeded. No disciple of learning must work for selfish ends. No one branch of know- ledge must be considered as an end in itself or made 1 Not in 1472, as erroneously stated (Marx, ii. 49), in Treves. Besides the university, there was a college under the charge of the ( Brethren of the Social Life,' in which theology and philosophy were taught. In the year 1499 the Archbishop John II. granted this college the privilege of conferring, after an examination, the degrees of A.B. and LL.D. as from the university (Marx, ii. 470).