OCR
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. Formal 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 evangelical 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 mathematics, 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. + 27e