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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 ‘philosophy’ 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 edition), 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.
