Mediaeval Universities in Central Europe

Budapest.—In Hungary, the university at Ofen (Hungarian Buda) was founded in 1475. It had a school of law at Pressburg, the sole remains of the university there founded by Mathias Corvinus in 1465. This, in 1914, was turned into a university, and forms to-day the Czechoslovak university of Bratislava.

Foundation of Louvain.—In the Netherlands the growing wealth and prosperity of the different States especially favoured the formation of new centres of learning. In the flourishing duchy of Brabant the University of Louvain (1426) was to a great extent controlled by the municipality; and their patronage, although ulti mately attended with detrimental results, long enabled Louvain to outbid all the other universities of Europe in the munificence with which she rewarded her professors. In the course of the next cen tury the "Belgian Athens," as she is styled by Lipsius, ranked sec ond only to Paris in numbers and reputation. It possessed no less than 28 colleges, while its active press afforded facilities to the author and the controversialist of which both Cambridge and Oxford were at that time almost destitute. It embraced all the faculties, and no degrees in Europe stood so high as guarantees of general requirements. Erasmus records it as a common saying, that "no one could graduate at Louvain without manners and age." Leipzig.—In Germany the conditions connected with the rise of the University of Leipzig are especially noteworthy, it having been the result of the migration of almost the entire German ele ment from the University of Prague. This element comprised: (I) Bavarians, (2) Saxons, (3) Poles (this last-named division being drawn from a wide area, which included Meissen, Lusatia, Silesia and Prussia), and, being represented by three votes in the assemblies of the university, while the Bohemians possessed but one, had acquired a preponderance in the direction of affairs which the latter could no longer submit to. Religious differences, again, evoked mainly by the preaching of John Huss, further intensified the existing disagreements; and eventually, in the year King Wenceslaus, at the prayer of his Bohemian subjects, issued a decree which exactly reversed the previous distribution of votes —three votes being assigned to the Bohemian nation and only one to all the rest. The Germans took deep umbrage, and seceded to Leipzig, where, a bull having been obtained from Alexander V.

(Sept. 9, 1409), a new studium generale was founded by the'land grave of Thuringia and the margraves of Meissen. The members were divided into four nations—composed of natives of Meissen, Saxony, Bavaria and Poland.

Rostock.

At Rostock, in the north, the dukes John and Albert of Mecklenberg conceived the design of founding a university from which the faculty of theology should be excluded. The university was accordingly founded as proposed in 1419 ; but in 1431 Eugenius IV. instituted a faculty of theology. Six years later, the whole academic community having incurred the papal ban, was fain to migrate to Greifswald, returning, however, to Rostock in 1443, but with one important exception, that of a master of arts named Henry Rubenow, who remained to become burgomaster of the former city, and succeeded in persuading Duke Wratislaw of Pommern to make it the seat of a university. Calix tus III. granted a bull in 1456, but it was stipulated that the rector should be a bishop, and the professorial chairs were also made partially dependent for endowment on canonries. Greifs wald thus became exposed to the full brunt of the struggle which had ensued when the endeavour to nationalize the German Church was terminated by the Concordat of Vienna (1448).

Freiburg.

The universities of Freiburg, in Baden, and Tu bingen, in Wurttemberg, alike owed their foundation to the countess Matilda, by whose persuasion her husband, the archduke of Austria, known as Albrecht VI., was induced to found Freiburg in 1455, and Count Eberhard (her son by a former marriage) to found Tubingen in 1477. At Freiburg, under the supervision of its first rector, Matthew Hummel of Villingen, the numbers were soon largely augmented by migrations of students from Vienna and from Heidelberg, while its resources, which originally were chiefly an annual grant from the city council, were increased by the bestowal of canonries and prebends. Erasmus had made Frei burg his residence from 1529 to 1535, during which time he may have originated the tradition of liberal learning, but in 1620, under the rule of the archduke Maximilian, the control of the humanistic studies and of the entire faculty of philosophy was handed over to the Jesuits, who also gained possession of two of the chairs of theology.