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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE REFORMATION
to read ethics in the college,’® and the Franciscans also covered a chair in
theology.’ The rest of the appointments had to be funded by the university or
the Elector.
In 1507, four sets of lectures were read both in a Scotist and a Thomist way in
the Faculty of Arts." They included Aristotle’s (1) logic; (2) natural philosophy,
physics and De anima; (3) De coelo et mundo, De generatione et corruptione, De
meteoris and Parva naturalia as well as (4) the logic of Petrus Hispanus (13
c.).'” Grouped with these were courses on moral philosophy, later briefly taught
by Luther, metaphysics, and grammar. Except for the latter, using the work of
the Italian Humanist Johannes Sulpitius Verulanus (c.1430-after 1490), and the
lesser logic, all lectures were based on Aristotelian texts. A smaller collection
of four classes were offered in humanis litteris: on Virgil and Valerius Maximus,
Suetonius, Sallust, and a contemporary poem in praise of Wittenberg. A more
even distribution among the extraordinary instructors, five listed for ‘philoso¬
phy’ and five for ‘secular letters,’ could achieve little to balance the overall
picture. Scholasticism was the order of the day with Humanism relegated to a
secondary position (Table 1).
Of the higher faculties,*° medicine was the weakest. It had only a single
regular professorship in 1507. In the law school, the predominance of canon
law was tangible in the early years of the university.” The Rotulus of 1507 lists
six full professors, all doctors, of church law, and only two, one a doctor, of
Roman law. Unfortunately, their fields are only given for the Roman lawyers.”
Altogether five instructors offered classes in theology, one of them apparently
as an extraodrinarius. Their fields are again left unnamed (Table 2).
16 Martin Luther (1483-1546) was recruited for Wittenberg through this system: first as a Master
lecturing on the Nicomachean Ethics, later as von Staupitz’s successor in Biblical studies.
7 UBW 1:15 (No. 17), 1:37 (No. 23).
18 UBW 1:15-16 (No. 17).
Peter’s identity and hence the actual dates of his life, are debated, cf. SpRUYT, Joke, Peter of
Spain, (rev. entry), in E. N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Winter 2012 edi¬
tion), online: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peter-spain/ (last accessed 30 May 2013).
20 UBW 1:14-15 (No. 17).
In fact, Lück notes that in the earliest years only canon law was taught and civil law was
introduced with some delay. Lück, Heiner, Die Wittenberger Juristenfakultät im Sterbejahr
Martin Luthers, in id., (ed.), Martin Luther, 73-93, here 76n.
For helpful overviews of the fields of law in the Middle Ages and the early modern period, see
GRENDLER, Universities, ch. 13, esp. 434-435, and Lück, Die Wittenberger Juristenfakultät,
76-77.