Oldal 21 [21]
THE UNIVERSITY OF THE REFORMATION
logic and natural philosophy, which should have been covered threefold. The
institutionalisation of the nominalist way did not come into being. Four of the
six extant lectureships, all three Scotist courses*! and the Thomist logica minor,
were covered by canons of the Collegiate Church. The rest of the lectures were
not in principle bound to particular schools. They included ethics, metaphys¬
ics (in actual fact independent rather than combined as proposed in 1508),
and, from 1514, mathematics® as well as Latin grammar and classics. The first
three courses were based on Aristotle’s works in medieval translation. While
the latter two appointments covered three lectureships, since Vach was estab¬
lished to teach both Latin poetry and rhetoric,*’ of the Humanist courses only
grammar was a degree requirement. Taken together, all but three of the twelve
lectureships (counting Vach’s dual appointment as two) in 1516 were scholastic
in nature, and they included all of the relatively well-funded (endowed) chairs.
At this stage, Humanism played a decidedly auxiliary role (Table 5).
In terms of academic orientation, scholasticism was also the order of the day
in the theology faculty. In addition to the disputations, there were only three
regular theological lecture courses on offer in 1516.** The Augustinians’ Bibli¬
cal professorship was outnumbered by those of their scholastic colleagues, and
the bulk of the courses, including graduate students’ required exposition of the
Sentences, also represented the high medieval tradition. Nor should the Bib¬
lical chair be considered, in and of itself, any evidence for a ‘Fore-Reformation’
drive; it was a regular arrangement. Before Luther, there seems to have been
no significant impulse to reform theology at Wittenberg.* In the same year,
there was still only one chair in medicine” (Table 6).
3! Given the stability and financial security of these endowed positions, this is a clear sign of the
general pre-eminence of Scotism at Wittenberg.
2 UBW 1:73-74 (No. 54).
33 That is clear not only from the longevity of his double coverage (1503-1521, after which he
continued to teach poetry for another twenty years), but also from his increased salary whereby
for the two classes he received time and a half the usual remuneration for masters in the Arts
faculty, which was supplemented by the university to bring it to a full double salary (UBW
1:77, No. 57). He in fact held two lectures a day, poetry at 8 am and rhetoric at 4 pm (ibid.). The
same arrangement, including lecture times and salary, was confirmed in 1517 (UBW 1:84, No.
63). By contrast, Bonifatius Erasmi de Rode, a.k.a. Master Zörbig (c.1480-1560) did not receive
dual income for his coverage of astronomy and mathematics (UBW 1:78, No. 57). Indeed he
only delivered a single lecture a day, at 2 pm (ibid.).
34 UBW 1:77 (No. 57).
35 BRECHT, Luther, vol. 1, 120-121; cf. SCHEIBLE, Aristoteles, 126.
36 UBW 1:77 (No. 57).
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