OCR Output

GÁBOR ITTZÉS

Table 12 Regular professorships in the Faculty of Arts (1525)

App. Chair Salary
7 Greek 60 gl.
8 Hebrew 60 gl.
18 & 19 Quintilian (also rhetorician) 60 gl.
11&19 Elements of logic and rhetoric (also rhetorician) 60 gl.
2 Poetry 40 gl.
12 Mathematics 40 gl.
16 Physics 30 gl.
15 Elementary Latin/Greek/Hebrew 30 gl.

In terms of academic positions, the changes well underway by 1521 have now
been completed. The exact number of professorships is not entirely clear,
but we are largely back at (or slightly below) the pre-reform level of 1516 with
twelve’ chairs—but with what a difference in terms of teaching content! All
scholastic chairs were gone by 1525 (metaphysics apparently cancelled that
year). Practically nothing remained of the lectureships that had built the back¬
bone of undergraduate training barely ten years before. And some more recent
experiments had also been abandoned. One of the pedagogical positions had
been struck; attempts to renew the grammatical professorship were ultimately
abandoned and the chair given up. On the other hand, two rhetoricians were
now established, even if they were chosen from within the faculty and did not
increase the number of appointees. Overall, a completely new curriculum had
been developed, at the heart of which stood the study of languages, not only
Latin but also Greek and Hebrew. It was also supplemented by a fair doze of
natural sciences® (Table 12).

Structural changes were less dramatic in the higher faculties, but the con¬
tent of teaching was also altered there. Medicine now had two professorships.
The number of faculty in the law school slightly declined from 1516, but the
big change was that all five instructors were Roman lawyers. Canon law had
not been taught since the early 1520s in Wittenberg. The reversal of the bal¬
ance between the secular and ecclesiastical branches of law, observable since
the university’s inception, had thus reached its logical conclusion. The intel¬
lectual driving force of the high school was now visibly located in the theology

°° Melanchthon was not bound to any professorship with a definite content, but he did teach;

Premsel was still on the faculty list albeit without a teaching assignment, and there might
have been some doubling beyond the dual appointments of the rhetoricians.

67 Cf. n. 38, above.

68 Instead of lecturing on Quintilian, Johannes Longicampianus (c.1495-1529) in fact taught
lower mathematics from 1525 until his death.

* 30°