Bacon, and the comparison is decidedly in favor of the monk.[1]
There existed a considerable number of universities before the year 1400, chief among them were those of Paris, Bologna, Oxford and Cambridge, Salamanca, Prague, Vienna, Heidelberg, etc. From 1400 to the Reformation many new universities were founded in Western Christendom.[2] Twenty-six of those founded between 1400 and 1500 are still existing,[3] among them Würzburg, Leipsic, Munich, Tübingen, etc., in Germany; St. Andrew's, Glasgow, Aberdeen in Scotland; Upsala in Sweden; Copenhagen in Denmark, etc. In Germany alone nine were founded between 1456 and 1506.[4] But we need not dwell further on these universities, as any information that is sought can be easily gathered from the many books that are available on this subject.[5]
The intellectual activity of the universities of the Southern European countries was nowise inferior to that of Central and Northern Europe. In Portugal there was the University of Coimbra; in Spain, there were at least twelve universities before 1500,[6] the
- ↑ L. c., vol. II, pp. 523-524.
- ↑ Compayré enumerates 75 universities existing in 1482, the year before Luther's birth. "Who could deny," he says, "after merely glancing over this long enumeration, the importance of the university movement in the last three centuries of the Middle Ages?" Abelard, pp. 50-52.
- ↑ See Report of Com. of Ed., 1897-98, vol. II, p. 1741.
- ↑ Janssen, l. c., vol. I, p. 86.
- ↑ Janssen, vol. I. – Compayré, Abelard and the Origin and Early History of Universities (Scribner's Sons, New York). – Rashdall, vol. II, pp. 211-280; on the universities of Poland, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, and Scotland, pp. 283-315.
- ↑ See Rashdall, vol. II, pp. 65-107.