Oldal 15 [15]
OCR
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 welltrained 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 degrees 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 University 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 Augustinians, 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 University 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 +
