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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE REFORMATION
issued the first statutes for the whole university and each of the faculties.* The
Leucorea, as the university was called from the Greek translation of the city’s
name meaning ‘white hill’ (Weifsenberg), was thus a young school at the time of
the Reformation’s beginning. It was a prestige undertaking for the Elector, who
was therefore committed to its continued existence and success.
The main goal of the whole enterprise was to secure a steady supply of well¬
trained clerics for the government, which can be seen in the strength of the law
school. But in typical late medieval fashion, the university had four faculties: an
undergraduate college and three graduate schools (theology, law, medicine) as
we would call them today.® Universities offered a complex set of academic de¬
grees whose conferral presupposed the fulfilment of a number of requirements,
mostly classes taken or, in case of advanced degrees, offered. Education was
largely lecture-based, and lectures in turn were based on textbooks, which led
to a great flourishing of the commentary as an academic genre. While perhaps
the most successful academic textbook of all times has been Peter Lombard’s
Sentences, a mainstay of Western cultural history for over 400 years, upon
which virtually all significant medieval theologians commented, arguably the
greatest intellectual achievement of the Middle Ages was the rediscovery of
Aristotle, roughly at the same time as the growth of universities. Hence ‘the
Philosopher,’ as Aristotle was often reverently called, became vitally important
in (and for) medieval higher education. Schools of interpretation — notably the
Thomist, Scotist, and Ockhamist traditions — developed around his oeuvre,
and some of their disagreements, such as the nominalist/realist debates, deeply
divided the academic world.”
This general climate helped shape the particular features of Wittenberg Uni¬
versity as well. The early years were marked by much change and fluctuation,
but on the whole the Leucorea was characterised by a moderate Scotist via
antiqua approach. Humanism was on offer at the level of course listings, but
8 UBW 1:18—58 (Nos. 22—26). That the statutes were issued by the lord of the land rather than
the university itself shows that Wittenberg followed Tiibingen’s lead rather than the example of
the Italian schools. Several high-ranking officials, including Johann von Staupitz (1460-1524),
Dean of the Faculty of Theology and Vicar-General of the German Congregation of Augustin¬
ians, were responsible for the Swabian connection.
For the broader cultural historical developments briefly summed up in this paragraph, cf.
GRENDLER, Paul F., The Universities of the Italian Renaissance, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Uni¬
versity Press, 2011, and LEINSLE, Ulrich G., Einführung in die scholastische Theologie, Paderborn
etc. Schöningh, 1995.
Witness, e.g., the developments at Prague in the early fifteenth century, already alluded to (cf.
n. 4, above). Sachiko Kusukawa, however, offers a helpful reminder that the conflict of the viae
was not inevitable. KusuKawa, Sachiko, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The Case of
Philip Melanchthon, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, 12.
+13 +