the integrity of their patrons, and the lofty standard by which they were judged,” says Sir W. Hamilton, “the call to a Paduan or Pisan chair was deemed the highest of all literary honours. The status of professor was in Italy elevated to a dignity which in other countries it has never reached; and not a few of the most illustrious teachers in the Italian seminaries were of the proudest nobility of the land. While the universities of other countries had fallen from Christian and cosmopolite to sectarian and local schools, it is the peculiar glory of the Italian that, under the enlightened liberality of their patrons, they still continued to assert their European universality. Creed and country were in them no bar—the latter not even a reason of preference. Foreigners of every nation are to be found among their professors; and the most learned man in Scotland, Thomas Dempster, sought in a Pisan chair that theatre for his abilities which he could not find at home.”[1]
To such catholicity of sentiment the Spanish universities
during the same period offer a complete contrast, their history
being so strongly modified by political and religious movements
that some reference to these becomes indispensable.
Valencia, founded in 1501 as a school Valencia.
Seville.not only of theology
and of civil and canon law, but also of the arts and of medicine,
and sanctioned at the petition of its council by Alexander VI.
(see Denifle, i. 645–46), and Seville, sanctioned by
Julius II. in 1505, appear both to have been regarded
without mistrust at Rome. But although the latter pontiff had
approved the foundation of the university of Santiago as early as
1504, the bull for its creation was not granted by Clement VII.
until 1526. While, again, the design of establishing a university
at Granada had been approved by Charles V. in the
same year, it was not until 1531 that Clement gave his
consent, and even then the work of preparation was deferred for
another six years. Little indeed is to be learnt respecting the
Granada.
new society until the foundation of the liberally endowed College
de Sacro Monte by the archbishop of the province in 1605.
These delays are partly to be accounted for by the well-known
political jealousies that existed between the monarch and the
pontiff; but it is also to be noted that at precisely the same period
a movement of no slight importance, whereby it was sought to
gain the recognition by the church of the writings and teaching
of Erasmus, had been going on in the universities of Spain, and
had ultimately died out. It died out at the uncreating voice
of the Dominican Melchior Cano, who revived the ancient
scholasticism and the teaching of Aquinas. Then followed the
Jesuits, whom Cano himself had once denounced as “precursors
of Antichrist,” and under their direction the scholastic philosophy,
together with a certain attention to Greek and Hebrew,
became the dominant study. And when the council of Trent
had done its work, and doctrinal controversy seemed to have
been finally laid to rest, Gregory XIII. in 1574 authorized the
Oviedo.
foundation of the university of Oviedo; but this was
not opened until 1608, and then only with a faculty of
law. After this time the universities in Spain shared in the
general decline of the country; and even after the expulsion of
the Jesuits in 1769 no marked improvement is discernible in
their schools. On the contrary, the departure of a body of very
able instructors, who, whatever objections might be taken to
their doctrinal teaching, were mostly good scholars and men
in close touch with the outer world, distinctly favoured that
tendency to lifeless routine and unreasoning tradition which
characterizes the Spanish universities until the second half of
the 19th century.
The comparative unimportance of the universities founded
during the same period in Italy is partially explained by the
number of those which previously existed. In the
papal states Macerata and Camerino were founded
at a wide interval; the former, Italian universities.
Macerata.
Camerino.according to tradition,
by a bull of Nicholas IV. as early as the 13th century,
the latter not until the year 1727 by a bull of Benedict
XIII. Macerata, however, ceased to exist as a university in
the last century, retaining only a faculty of law, but contributing
to the maintenance of the medical faculty at Camerino, which
was constituted one of the newly created “free universities”
(along with Urbino, Ferrara and Perugia) in 1890, but
continued to exist only with the aid of contributions
levied on the local parishes. Urbino, originally
opened as a studium under papal patronage in 1671, was also
constituted a free university, its chief study being that of law.
At Modena there had long existed a faculty of the
Urbino.
Modena.
same study which enjoyed a high repute, but it was
not until 1683 that it received its charter from Duke Francis II.
of Este as the university of his capital. Like Camerino, Modena
had to rely chiefly on funds collected in the commune, but was
able nevertheless to acquire some reputation as a school of
law and medicine, declining, when the Jesuits were installed by
the Austrian authorities, to revive again in the general recovery
which took place among the seats of learning after the unification
of Italy. In Sicily, Palermo (1779) originated
Sicily.
Palermo.
in an earlier institution composed mainly of subjects Palermo
of Ferdinand IV., who had followed him on his expulsion
from the throne of the Two Sicilies at Naples towards
the end of the 18th century. It was closed in 1805, but reopened
in 1850 to become a school of considerable importance
in all the faculties with over 1000 students. The two universities
of Sardinia—Sassari (1634) and Cagliari (1506)—were
founded under the Spanish rule, and both died out
Sassari.
Cagliari.
when that rule was exchanged for that of Austria. Under
the auspices of the house of Savoy they were re-established, but
neither can be said to have since achieved any marked success.
For the most part, however, the Reformation represents the great boundary line in the history of the medieval universities, and long after Luther and Calvin had passed away was still the main influence in the history of those new foundations which arose in Protestant countries. Even in Catholic countries its secondary effects were scarcely less perceptible, as they found expression in connexion with the Counter-Reformation. In Germany the Thirty Years’ War was attended by consequences which were felt long after the 17th century. In France the Revolution of 1789 resulted in the actual uprooting of the university system.
The influence of the Humanists, and the special character which it assumed as it made its way in Germany in connexion with the labours of scholars like Erasmus, John Reuchlin and Melanchthon, augured well for the future. It was free from the frivolities, the pedantry, the immoralities and the scepticism which characterized so large a proportion of the corresponding culture in Italy. It gave promise of resulting at once in a critical and enlightened study of the masterpieces of classical antiquity, and in a reverent and yet rational interpretation of Pernicious influences of sectarianism. the Scriptures and the Fathers. The fierce bigotry and the ceaseless controversies evoked by the promulgation of Lutheran or Calvinistic doctrine dispelled, however, this hopeful prospect, and converted what might otherwise have become the tranquil abodes of the Muses into gloomy fortresses of sectarianism. Of the manner in which it affected the highest culture, the observation of Henke in his Life of Calixtus (i. 8), that for a century after the Reformation the history of Lutheran theology becomes almost identified with that of the German universities, may serve as an illustration.
The first Protestant university was that of Marburg, founded by Philip the Magnanimous, landgrave of Hesse, 30th May 1527. Expressly designed as a bulwark of Lutheranism, it was mainly built up out of the confiscation of the property of the religious orders in the Marburg.Hessian capital. The house of the Dominicans, who had fled on the first rumour of spoliation, was converted into lecture-rooms for the faculty of jurisprudence. The church and convent of the order known as the “Kugelherrn” was appropriated to the theological faculty. The friary of the Barefooted Friars was shared between the faculties of medicine and philosophy. The university, which was the object of the landgrave’s peculiar care, rapidly rose to celebrity; it was resorted to by students from remote
- ↑ Hamilton, Discussions, 2nd ed. p. 373.
