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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE REFORMATION Table 7 Overview of the number of regular professorships in the higher faculties (1507-1516) Faculty 1507 1508 (proposed) 1516 Theology 4 5 3 Law (Roman) 2 3 4 Law (Canon) 6 4 3 Medicine 1 2 1 Total 13 14 11 In 1507 four canonries of the Collegiate Church had been dedicated to teaching ecclesiastical law, but by 1516 one canon had switched to civil law, as had Wolfgang Stahelin, whose salary came from the state treasury. Christoph Scheurl, the other regular professor of canon law on the Elector’s payroll in 1507, moved to Nuremberg in 1511, and the new appointment, filled by Christian Beyer, was in Roman law. In other words, whereas the Elector funded two professorships each in canon law and civic law in 1507, by 1516 he instead supported three Roman lawyers at the university, and a position in the same branch formerly financed by the treasury — lectureship on the Jnstitutiones — was now largely covered from the income of an endowed canonry (Table 6). What we see on the eve of the Reformation in Wittenberg is, then, a fairly typical late medieval university. But there are signs of the changing times. Kenneth G. Appold identified the rise of early modern universities ex privilegio, as opposed to the more purely medieval tradition ex consuetudine.*” Many of the identifying marks — deliberate foundation by a territorial ruler; a more public and secular (rather than quasi-monastic) character; decreased internationality; or a more effective exercise of influence by the local sovereign, often governed by pragmatic considerations (clearly visible in the refashioning of the law school) — certainly apply to the Leucorea. Other traits, however, betray a more traditional side. The university depended, in a medieval fashion, on church endowment guaranteed by papal decree for more than half of its operating costs (Table 8). The area where the traditionalism of Wittenberg was most visible is the educational content it offered. The Leucorea was clearly scholastic in orientation even if its intellectual climate included a significant Humanist component. But there was a constant push for more of the latter. 37 APPOLD, Kenneth G., Academic Life and Teaching in Post-Reformation Lutheranism, in R. Kolb (ed.), Lutheran Ecclesiastical Culture: 1550-1675, Leiden, Brill, 2008, 65-115, here 66-75; cf. Lück in TRE vol. 36, 232. + 21°
