Seite 29 [29]
THE UNIVERSITY OF THE REFORMATION
become available® (Table 11). It is also clear from the list that the shift that
began in 1518 with the establishment of new Humanist lectureships promoting
the study of languages continues further. The chair in Hebrew is highly paid,
and although we have no exact data for its counterpart in Greek here, we know
that Melanchthon’s salary was even higher.
The decline of old-style teaching continued for some time. Within a year
of the introduction of the new course on the elements of logic and rhetoric,
it subsumed lesser logic, and both scholastic chairs devoted to the work of
Petrus Hispanus came to an end. Luther’s first position, the lectureship on the
Nicomachean Ethics, long under attack both by faculty and students, may have
become defunct even earlier. The chair in metaphysics, briefly regaining its
independence in 1523, was given up two years later. Since the newly established
pedagogical position took care of teaching Latin, the old chair in grammar,
after some reshuffling, was finally relinquished in 1523-1524. Other recent
reform arrangements also had to be abandoned. Both the new Humanist chair
in Aristotelian physics, established in 1518, and the professorship on greater
logic, created in 1520 as a more up-to-date substitute after the collapse of the
Scotist lecture course,” were discontinued after 1523 (Table 10).
Hand-in-hand with the decline of traditional teaching went a plummeting
in the number of graduations. With the requisite classes obliterated, degree
requirements could no longer be met, and degrees were not conferred. For¬
mal graduation effectively ceased after 1522-1523. A typical student career
in those years would consist in taking theology classes for some time, usually
without having fulfilled the standard prerequisites by obtaining a BA from
the Faculty of Arts first, and then, without graduation, assuming an evangeli¬
cal preaching position.*’ By the early to mid-1520s, practically the entire late
medieval scholastic educational system had broken down at Wittenberg. After
the rearrangement of the course offerings, a reform of the order of study was
also badly needed.
There is some inconsistency in the plans. They were outlined in two versions within the same
document (UBW 1:117-118, No. 108). Both included Hebrew, poetry and rhetoric, and math¬
ematics, as well as logic. One version had Quintilian; the other, physics in the fifth slot.
56 Cf.n. 52, above.
57 SCHEIBLE, Melanchthon, 35; Aristoteles, 128 and 136-139.
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