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GÁBOR ITTZÉS
In the spring of 1535, extensive negotiations and careful preparations began
between the university and the Elector.” As a result, in May next year John
Frederick issued a new charter (Fundationsurkunde) for the university, crown¬
ing the work of his uncle and father.”* The preparatory material offers detailed
insight into the actual state of the institution in terms of structure, finances,
and personnel at several points. Naturally, there are some variations, but what
is remarkable is the similarity to the data from 1525, and thus the constancy
and endurance of the arrangements worked out then, especially in comparison
with the previous ten years of the university’s history. Whereas the period
1516-1526 was a decade of unparalleled change and transformation, the years
between 1526-1536 strike us with their stability. What is codified now, in 1536,
is nothing really new from the mid-1520s. The reforms Luther had pushed for
and Melanchthon was instrumental in bringing about, and the structures they
helped develop, are now formally written into the constitution of Wittenberg
University.
Intended as an enduring arrangement that secures the maintenance of the
whole institution, the charter speaks in terms of structures, positions, general
rules. Individual names are not mentioned; actual appointments were treated
in separate documents. It is clear from the background material that particu¬
larities such as extra pay (Luther now received 300 guilders a year, and several
other peoples income was also supplemented) or unique academic arrange¬
ments (Luther and Melanchthon were free to choose their lectures) were taken
into account, but ultimately treated as accidental, and not incorporated into
the university’s establishment.
The Faculty of Arts continues to be the lowest ranking but the most sizable.
It is endowed with eleven chairs, largely those already in place in 1525. Gone
are the lectureships on Pliny and Quintilian, but a second Latin professorship is
created in Terence and grammar. The elementary course on logic and rhetoric
is dropped, and the long drawn-out reshuffling of the centrepiece of scholastic
heritage finally reaches its conclusion in the two chairs for dialectic and rhet¬
oric. There also exists a position in ethics (to replace the old Aristotelian chair),
but it remains vacant. There is apparently some confusion about the identity
of the rhetoricians, but they continue to be selected from within the faculty.”
7? UBW 1:162-172 (Nos. 183-192).
73 UBW 1:172-184 (No. 193).
7 In the list of professorships, the lecturers on dialectic and rhetoric are made responsible for the
fortnightly declamations (UBW 1:177 No. 193); in the section on disputations and declama¬
tions, the professors of Greek and Terence are named as rhetoricians and assigned the duty
of overseeing the declamations (UBW 1:178.).
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