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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE REFORMATION
students for the service of God, not least in the context of a learned ministry
in which the proclamation of the gospel took centre stage.
The higher faculties were also considerably reshaped by the renewal of the
university. Medicine was the poor relation among the graduate schools, yet
it was perhaps the greatest winner of the whole development. The number of
medical professorships increased from one to three, a proportionately unpar¬
alleled success. Whatever its merit from a twenty-first-century perspective,
within the context of the sixteenth century ‘Wittenberg anatomy, a special
kind of integration of medical knowledge with philosophy and theology, was
highly successful.”
The law school underwent a twofold change. On the one hand, forces pre¬
dating and essentially independent of the Reformation set in motion a process
that radically altered the faculty’s internal structure. Whereas at the time of
the university’s foundation Roman law was missing from the course offerings
and canon law held the day, by the early 1520s their fortunes were completely
reversed, and canon law was altogether dropped from the curriculum. Later
the total omission was rectified, but ecclesiastical law never regained its lost
ground and remained the weaker branch.
The overall importance of the law school as a whole also decreased consid¬
erably as the sixteenth century progressed. Initially, it was the largest of the
three graduate schools, and clearly the most prestigious faculty, which was also
reflected in professorial salaries. The Reformation, however, changed that. The¬
ology gained ascendancy, and its pre-eminence was reflected in institutional
structures by the mid-1530s. Salaries had become highest here, and it was
also comparable to the law school in the number of established professorships
(Table 17). The leading university administrators were also recruited from the
theology faculty. Naturally, the Reformation left its imprint on the school’s
educational programme as well. Scholastic theology, holding sway in the early
1500s, was quickly gone. From the 1520s on, all theological scholarship was
Biblical, which is mirrored in the teaching content assigned to the individual
chairs. By the 1530s, all of them were responsible for the exposition of various
sets of Biblical books.
University finances were thoroughly reorganised as well. At the beginning of
our timeline stands a papal grant of enlarged resources. At the end of the period
we find the All Saints’ endowment not only secularised but actually incorpora¬
ted into the university, establishing a secure and enduring financial base for it.
78 NuTTON, Wittenberg Anatomy.
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