various German universities,[1] as Wittenberg, Erfurt, Leipsic, Frankfurt, Rostock, Greifswald, Cologne, Vienna, Heidelberg, etc. Ingolstadt, of all German universities, was least affected by the Reformation. Under the leadership of Dr. Eck the Lutheran invasion was energetically combated. The number of students declined somewhat, but not considerably, so that this university shows the most favorable conditions of all universities.[2] The same decline was visible in the lower schools. Döllinger has collected a long list of complaints that could be easily enlarged, about the ruin of the schools consequent upon the religious revolution.[3]
The humanist Eobanus Hessus writes from Erfurt in the year 1523: "Under the cloak of the Gospel the escaped monks here are suppressing all liberal studies. Our university is quite deserted; we are utterly despised." In the same year the Dean of the Erfurt philosophical faculty complains: "Nobody would have believed it, if it had been predicted that in a short time our university would have fallen so low that scarcely a shadow of its former lustre would remain." In the same strain lament Melanchthon from Wittenberg, and others from all seats of learning throughout Germany.
Erasmus, an eye-witness of the first scenes in the great drama of the Reformation, the intimate friend of Melanchthon and other Reformers, writes in 1528: "Wherever Lutheranism reigns, there literature per-
