Gone Medieval - Origins of Medieval Universities

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

The University of Vienna is one of the oldest in the world. Founded by Rudolph IV Habsburg in 1365, it has been teaching students for centuries. But what can Vienna’s story tell us about the origins of medieval universities and what medieval people were actually taught?In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr Eleanor Janega visits Vienna to explore the university archives with Dr Nina Knieling. Together they discuss what it took to found a university in the Middle Ages and discover that medieval students, like their modern day counterparts, had a penchant for rowdy parties! This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob WeinbergEnjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world. to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. It's a glorious September morning and I'm heading to the Vienna University Archives to meet Nina Knailing. To get there from my flat, I cross the Schweidenbuka, from which I can see the bars beginning to set out their sun loungers along the Danube canals. I dodge the trams picking up passengers on the Schweidenplatz. I pass the sausage stands serving the early lunch crowd and head up the hill along the cobbles of post-Ghasa.

Just a stone's throw from the Gothic glory of St. Stephen's Cathedral, the archives are in a huge Baroque building, the color of Orange Sherbert. Before these buildings were ever dreamed of in the 14th century, while Prague was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire under Emperor Charles IV, Vienna was becoming an urban powerhouse in its own right. And central to that was the creation of a university to rival all others. The university archives hold a treasure trove of documents about the university's founding in 1365. and I've come to see them for myself. So I'm here in the beautiful Baroque building of the Vienna University Archives to meet Nina Knaeling, and I'm going to annoy her by talking about one of my very favorite subjects,

which is medieval universities. Nina, thank you so much for having me. Well, thanks a lot for being here and for being interested in the university history. Well, actually, what does the university mean? Yeah. That's a very important question in the beginning. And actually the Latin word Universitas means cooperation, association or community.

Thus the Universitas Magistorum and Scolarium was a cooperation of teachers and scholars or the purpose of higher education. Why founding a university in the Middle Ages? That's maybe the most important question. Actually, we have four main groups of social agents who were interested in the foundation of a university. What they had in common was their target. to maintain or gain power. On the continent, one main player was the Roman Catholic Church

with Pope on top. For a long time, the church provided education, especially at Cathedral schools, but also other schools, and they provided basic knowledge in reading and writing. The ecclesiastical powers were interested in spreading their word by the learned society and in maintaining its influence on higher education, especially against emerging heresies. Okay, so Nina, you come to university as a student in the Middle Ages, and we know the university has got these four different faculties. And one of these, though, is the faculty of the arts. So you come to university, but you have a basic education at school, maybe at the cathedral school or Paris school or... So you can read Latin. You can write Latin.

You can read and write. And then you come to university. And you study first at the Faculty of Arts. And the Faculty of Arts, they have the Septum Artes Liberales. So these are the seven free arts. And this concept actually dates back to ancient Greek times. And they are divided in the Trivium, which more or less are humanities, it's rhetoric, grammar, and logic. And the quadrivium, which are the sciences, mathematics,

geometry, astronomy, and music. So these seven three arts are taught at the Faculty of Arts. And once you have finished there, you may attend. You don't have to, but you may attend the Faculty of Theology, Medicine, or Law. So basically, before you can do anything else, you've got to have these essential building blocks of the liberal arts. So what we nowadays call the high school in the Middle Ages was the Faculty of Arts. arts. Yeah. And so in early modern times, we would talk about the time from 12 to 18, where you have the faculty of arts, and then you would attend one of the other faculties. Oh, that makes sense.

It's hard to explain what having a university means, because this idea that you're creating an educated class of people who can go out there and read and write, who have a real theological understanding of the bedrock of what medieval life is about. That's a basic. attractor of people to your city if you want to make a big important city and you say, oh, we have a university. Students will come from all over in order to do that because that's how you get a job in the church. That's how you get a job with the local king or with the emperor, even better. Now we think, oh, a university is just a university. That's a place where people go learn, but for medieval rulers, it's a really important symbol. Exactly. And furthermore,

the state powers and the ecclesiastical powers have the need for for qualified scholars in common. And thus law, medicine, and theology. And the next social agent actually is the city itself, which in our case is the city, the university was situated. Because the town was interested in a university as it guaranteed economic growth and the prosperous future with the academic elite in general

and with the learned sons of the city in particular. Yeah, because this is one thing I think that's very similar about universities now. If you're from the higher parts of society, you know, in the middle ages, and you need to get this education really to go ahead of yourself. And if you always have to leave the city to go to a university somewhere, maybe you don't come back. Exactly. That's also why universities were in competition against each other. Yeah, last but at least one social agent are the students and teachers. They shape and are the university itself. And actually, it was their impetus, their motivation to take action and get together.

And that's why universities were established. Students were able to gain knowledge and to receive a degree. Teachers received the right to teach and did so in the universities all over Europe. So I'm addressing here the so-called perigrinatio Academica. So the movement of teachers and scholars in all over Europe. And moreover, students and teachers received liberties and privileges recognizing and stabilizing their position. And this counts very much when we think about the city and the students and the university all over because obviously the city and the university were also in a fight against each other.

Yeah. Because they had diverging interests. This discussion starts when the university was founded. And it was through the whole Middle Ages that we can see that they were not getting along very well. We have a term in English for this, and we call it town gown relations. Oh, yeah. So, you know, the gown is worn by, you know, the clerics and the people who are within the university. And so it marks them out as not a member of the actual town because one of the privileges that people in universities get, right,

is that they're usually under ecclesiastical rules. Because students are naughty. It always makes me laugh how medieval students are really like students now where, you know, they're drunk, they're rowdy. I know that there was a riot that got caused in Paris at the university because a bunch of students didn't want to pay their bill at a tavern. And they just ran out. And when Cole Hathelwood ran after them, they moaned him. And then no one could get them in trouble because they're part of the university. So this is a real everyday life stuff.

This is everyday life stuff. and we have documents which show the complaints of the city about the students because they were singing loud, they were talking loud, they were drunk, they were maybe begging. Oh. So this wasn't seen with a lot of enthusiasm by the city. And these are maybe common complaints which you can find in lots of funerosity cities. Well, I think we also need to talk about two different types.

types of universities founded in the Middle Ages because the University of Bologna and Paris are the first universities. Montpellier and Oxford follow immediately and they date back to the 11th and 12th centuries respectively. And in this city's teachers and scholars simply started teaching and learning without any formal act. Right. Or a formal establishment. And only later on the city, crown and the church recognized universities. So there are also universities who were found later, and they already have a formal act of foundation in the beginning, which means that the crown released a charter. Right.

In some cases, the city itself, or the pope or the ecclesiastical powers are the founders of a university. So you can find that all over Europe as well. Most and foremost, there is the crown who founded a university. And then another important aspect of the founders was the fact that they not only wanted to maintain and gain order and power, they also wanted to be remembered instead of falling into oblivion. Right. Because as you know, in the Middle Ages, one crucial aspect of life was settling memorabilia and remembrance practices before one's own death. And that's why you can also find church masses at the day of the founder's death, for example.

Okay. And as you can see, the name of the University of Vienna is Ema Mater-Rudolfina. And so already name of the university can find the remembrance of the founder. Once the universities are founded by a formal act and the financial situation is settled, the universities of teachers and scholars start to flourish. But sometimes this takes some time, as it was the case in Vienna. Rudolf was born in 1339 into the family of Habsburg. So he's the namesake of his ancestor.

And Rudolf I was the first of Habsburg was emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire was founded by the King of Germany, alter the first, who was crowned emperor by the Cope in 962. And from the late 15th century until the solution of the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg family almost continuously hold the title of Amper. of the Holy Roman Empire and from 1804 to 1918 the title of emperor of Austria. And Rudolf became the first founder of a university without a royal crown. That's interesting, yeah. I hadn't thought about that.

Well, that's also very important if you think about the character and the personality of Rudel. Yeah. I would like to read some lines of the founding charter where it says that every wise person shall become more reasonable and every unwise person shall be brought to human reason. Oh, I love that. Every unwise person shall be brought to human reason. That's very interesting because these are the words of the charter. And Duke Rudolph I set out his reasons for the foundation.

With these words from the university's founding charter, Duke Rudolph, the fourth, set out his reasons for the foundation of a university in his resident city, Vienna. That's the alma mater, Rudolfina, as it was called later. was the third oldest university east of the Rhine and north of the Alps after Prague, which was founded Berudo's father-in-law, Emperor Charles VIII, in 1347 and Krakko, which was founded only a year before the University of Vienna. The documents issued by Duke Rolf de Forth for this purpose are remarkable in several ways.

First, he ordered to produce two almost identical charters, one in German, the other in Latin language. The Latin version addressed, of course, scholars and the church, especially the Roman Curia, which is basically the administration of the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope, who will watch the financial for the foundation of a medieval university. The German version addresses nobles of his reign. In this founding charter, we witnessed the aim of contributing to the glory of the country, of Austria and the city of Vienna. However, the existence of a university directly affected the citizens of Vienna as all members of the university,

which are teachers and students, constituted a highly privileged community with their own court, and they didn't have to pay duties and taxes. So this is also why there is a certain rivalry between the university and the city. So it's not just that naughty students go to a different court when they're in trouble. It's also they're not paying for the walls, the rows and everything. Exactly. Wow. Well, they had to pay for studying.

That's what they had to pay for. But they have had lots of these privileges. And as I said before, there was an all court for the university. And there was also the rivalry between the court of the university and the court of the city. Because we have this special court system until the 18th century. Right. Wow. Yeah. Only in the course of the 18th century, we have a court system which developed in the system we know nowadays.

So this was a very big issue between the city and the university, because if you maybe have someone who has an office in the city, but study as well. Which coin do you go to? So Rodolf found this universe. He does it in order to, you know, make a name for him. And that really works, right? Because Vienna becomes the biggest university in Europe. Yes, that's what I think Roloff intended to, but he died too early to see how the university developed. So, Rudolf founded the university in 1365, and he issued two charters. And both are remarkable, even unique due to their luxuriant presentation with large format parchments. So this is the founding charter of the University of Vienna.

It dates back to 1365, the year where Rulov, 4th Archduke of Austria, founded the university. He also signed the charter. And that's why you can see here this line where he wrote. So this is something very special also for these times, because you can often see that they weren't writing themselves when they signed it. So this is his own signature. And you can see how hard it was for him to sign it himself. Because if you see the other letters, you see that this was written by someone who is used to write.

I was scribe. He was not. But he was so eager to sign it himself that we can see it nowadays. I've tried to use a quill in order to what I think. And it's so hard. It is really hard. It's one of these things where I think we all take for granted now. Oh, writing, that's something that's easy to do, but it's such an actual skill, especially with the goal.

But this charter is almost the size of my table in London. That's huge. That's what is so special about it, because it's one of the hugest charges you can find for a university history and especially the founding charter. And that's also due to the Archduke because he wanted to show the importance of his university in Vienna. Just such an incredible way of showing off. Exactly. And to say, oh, wow, his seal is enormous. That's always important to show the power of the crown.

Of course. And actually, that's also quite interesting to know because he wasn't the emperor. So what you can see here is basically all the legal definitions on how the university had to be built. In various ways, because it was also... stated that the university should have a known quarter in the city of Vienna. Oh, okay. So that is obviously due to what has happened already in Paris and in other university cities. But unfortunately, this didn't happen.

So it was Rudolph's idea to have a known Katje Latin. And there should be built a whole wall around this university quarter inside the city. Oh, so kind of a city within a city for the university. Exactly. And that's what you can find in the charter. Okay. And obviously the charter talks about the privileges of the scorers and teachers. And it just really is an incredible document to see because I think it's easy for us sometimes.

If you see these things rewritten down just in a book or something, when they're transcribed, it doesn't have that same impact. I mean, we've got a seal the side of a side plate or something. it looks like I should be putting my bread roll down. And that kind of brandiosity I think really underlines how important universities are. This means for a city is so much. And actually, Rudolph also wanted to impress not only us,

but also the church, the Pope. He wanted to impress the city because they were all involved in this founding because the Pope had to accept the foundation of the university. So you can also see that he explicitly, addresses the church in the Latin version of the charter. And the German version was addressed to the city of Vienna. So this is also quite interesting to know.

Because we don't only have one charter, we have an other one. Okay. Oh, wow. Why don't think I've seen the Spanish? It's obviously, again, to show the importance of this foundation. Actually, after the death of Rudolf, which happened only a few months after the university was founded, many things remained unsolved. Right. And so his brother, which is Ardrecht III, he took up the torch and he issued this second charter in 1384.

Because what was still open was where will the place of the university be? Right. Because there was no money for the university. Because of his sudden death. Right. So this is one of the main things you need to have when you found the university. You need financial resources. Of course, yeah.

And the other thing is Eribech bought two houses in the city center of Vienna. And in these two houses, we have the very first building of the university. Okay. And that was the moment when the lectures could take place in one place. Right. This is something that's hard for people to understand now. You know, when we say university, everyone automatically thinks, oh, you have buildings, there's a campus, there's a place to go to, but the medieval understanding of a university is much more, well, do you have some teachers?

And if there's teachers, and enough of them, that's university. But it is such a big deal to be able to say, we have our own houses. But again, it's as you say, if you die and you don't have enough money, it's a great idea. that's a really cute idea having a wall built around your university within the walls of a city. That's expensive. And maybe that's why it wasn't put into place in the end, because it simply one big idea Rudolf had, but it was never finished the way he intended to.

So Abrecht really finished the first ideas Rudolph had because the second issue after the sudden death of Rudolf was the Pelt didn't approve all of the faculties of the university, of Vienna. Wow. He didn't approve the Faculty of Theology, which was the most important one when we're thinking about the university in the Middle Ages. Yeah. So Ebrecht wanted to finish the work of Rudolf and that's why he issued his second charter and in the end, the Pope approved the four faculties of the University of Vienna. Okay. And that's why only in 1384 we have the full university. Got it. Okay, yeah. Speaking again of the way the charter looks, so we have 20 seals on this one.

Well, we have a lot. Why? Because the active foundation has been written but hasn't been signed. So there is one day where all come all together and they seal this act of foundation. So the act of foundation is also this getting together and signing the charter. Literally, it is a sealing ceremony, we would say. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. It does exactly what it says. But you really get that sense of it when you see it. You understand how many people were involved in this and the work and how important this must have been. Exactly.

Because this is just a ton of work, not just in the writing, which beautiful, really clear script. It's beautifully written, obviously. I think if you see all these seals, you see how important it was to also have the second, charter. Yeah, and this one I notice is in Latin. Exactly. Yeah, we don't have a German version of this charter. Right. Okay, so this is just the one to let everybody know. I mean, I suppose if you're trying to say, no, we have all four faculties, we also have theology here. This is going forward. It needs to be in Latin. Otherwise, no one will take it seriously. Well, yes, it's also in Latin because it's addressed to the Pope. The Pope. He just wanted to have his four faculties. There is Scholarlyne Inc. at the

beginning of the text, the duke's autograph signature and his equestrian seal and the seals of his two brothers, Ehrig and Leoport. And no other university founded in this period has founding documents which are comparable to Vienna. And that's why in 2014, the Austrian Commission for the UNESCO added the foundation charges of Duke Rudolph to the Austrian National Memory of the World Register. At this point, I have to say, it was never written. that women were not allowed to go to university in the Middle Ages. Because as it seems, it was evident that women shouldn't study at university. So only in very much later times we have this whole discussion about women and their right to go to university.

So women were allowed to attend the Faculty of Philosophy only in 1897. In 1900, it was a faculty of philosophy. medicine, the Faculty of Law only allowed women to study in 1919. Wow. And the Faculty of Theology only after the Second World War. Ah! Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So this is very important. And it's interesting that you can't find this thinking. It is evident that only men would attend universities in the Middle Ages. So what happened was that Ehriecht bought two houses for the university in the city. And they were adapted for the needs of the university. And basically where we are right now, this is the place where the two buildings were situated.

They were medieval buildings, which nowadays don't exist anymore because they were demolished when the Jesuits came. And we have a whole new building complex at this site in the 17th century. So actually in the 1620s, where they constructed a whole new building complex at this site in the 17th century. where they constructed a whole new complex for the university and the Jesuits. It just wasn't the style at the time, right? Now we go, oh, why would you destroy a medieval building? And I don't care. Because at that time, it was just a question if the building fulfills the needs of who is living there or studying there. And as the university was getting bigger and bigger, it was actually also an issue of space and room. So, the end of the university.

new university building site was to become the location where the Armamata, Rudolfina, resided for almost 500 years. And I just want to clarify what college means in Vienna. Because when we talk about college in England or in Great Britain, you would understand a place where the teachers and scholars live. And actually, it was divided in Vienna. Okay. There was the Duke's College where the teachers were living and the students had their own student houses around the university. So in this quarter where we are sitting right now, we have the main university building with the Duke's College. And all around us, there were what we call in German Burenz. So there were student houses and there were also specific

student houses for the poor students. Because Vienna actually was a university for the poor. We have huge numbers of poor students. So the Duke's College had the lecture halls and the students were all around it. As a student, you would need a certain social status to study at the university, but you just needed to address that you were poor by a document, maybe of the priest, of the community you were living in, and then you wouldn't have to pay the taxes of the university. Okay, so it's just sort of like you get a reference or something from... Exactly. Exactly.

And if we are talking about documents which are important for the history of the university, we have to talk about the matricula. The university matricola would list every student attending the university at one specific moment. And what does that mean? It means once you're assigned in a matricula, you would be a university member. And you would also be under the supervision of the court. And you also can find the taxes the student paid. So you would find the name of the student, the place he came from, and the taxes he paid.

Where are they coming from these students? Well, in the first years, we don't exactly know because the matricola was only started in 1377. Okay, yeah. But once it started, we have a very very, good overview of the students and they obviously came from the parts of all the Holy Roman Empire. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So obviously there were lots of locals as well, but they were this Peregrinacea Academica, which I was talking about before, this led to the fact that we have students from all over Europe.

That really shows how interconnected the Holy Roman Empire was. I think a lot of times now there's a tendency to see the Holy Roman Empire. Empire is just, oh, it's very fracturous. Everybody's completely different. They're not really united, but all you have to do is look at the matricula. And we're there, everyone's saying, oh, yeah, I'll go over to Vienna. That's kind of like something that I understand. That's in the world for me. So, you know, you might start out in Hamburg and end up in Vienna very easily, or, you know, Burgundy. Sure, why wouldn't you go to Vienna? Yeah. And it was also very important for the scholars and teachers to go to another city and study at another university or teach at another

university. Yeah, we still do that. We really understand that you benefit as a teacher, having other colleagues, having other experiences. That's still something we really do today. Exactly. So maybe you would go to Padua to study medicine or you would go to Bologna to study law and then come back and teach in Vienna. What I would like to show you on this diagram are the numbers of students in Vienna based on the matricula. Right. Which started in 1377.

And so you can see in the beginning, it already started more than 100 students a year. And there's this continuous growth up to the middle of the 15th century. Yeah, look at that. That's almost 800 students in the 15th century. That's a lot. That's a peak. But we can say that around 400 students a year was the average number of students per year. That's a huge number of students. And that's why Vienna is one of the biggest universities of the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages. So that's what makes Vienna so important. Because it actually was the place to be to study. And that really means something. You know, when you have that. many students in any one given place. It's such an affirmation. This is a place where you're

getting great faculty. This is the place that is doing the cutting edge work. And I think now a lot of people think that theology is dull. But for medieval people, theology is like how we treat like astrophysicists now. And these people are superstars in the middle ages. Exactly. They really are superstars. Since the master's sustainers depended on the fees of the students, they had to pay for tuition. However, large student numbers were also detrimental to the university standing among the citizens. The abundance of students made them less controllable. And as a consequence, as I've already said, there were lots of conflicts between students and the local youth as well. Okay. So not only by the administration, but by the community, by the city community.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For instance, journeymen and day laborers, they had everyday fights with the students. And some of these fights led also into death and contributed to the strained relationship between university and city council. Right. Okay. Yeah, on the verge of the late Middle Ages and during the rise of the new ideas of scientific exploits at the beginning of the early modern times, the university entered a short-lived golden age. That's what we can see in the figures of the number of students as well. And it was the era of Renaissance humanism. Right, of course. Evidently, ideas spread widely and rapidly

due to the invention of the printing press. Yeah. And the classic languages, the urban lifestyle, and the life-affirming principles of the humanists were highly appreciated, especially by the princely courts. Of course, yeah. This student contrast with the medieval university's scholastic educational tradition and the intellectual's longish way of life,

and actually they were oriented towards the afterlife. So this also is kind of conflict between those two groups. And the humanites scorned the Gothic Middle Ages and their barbaric mock Latin. And they opposed the stagnant scholastic teaching system with its outdated textbooks and the late medieval universities. So there were norms to deal with book holdings at the university. It is stated that the rector may decide what will happen to the bookholding of a university member after their death. The university holdings should only be sold with the rector's approval. Right.

And there was a policy to be followed by theft or loss of books. I guess sometimes now people don't realize how valuable books were. Exactly. Yeah. Actually, they are called and are treasures of the university, not only of the university, but we can find this book collections from the very beginning of the university. And this is even the fact that it's stated,

in the charter already means that it is important. I suppose before the inventant of the printing press, and even when the printing press still comes, you know, when every single book has to be manually copied out, when someone is sitting there with a quill and writing and not necessarily writing on paper, writing on parchment, that's animal skin. Someone has to kill an animal, skin the animal,

dry that animal skin out, get the hair off of it, right? And then that makes you appreciate what expensive objects books are, because there's so much work that goes into every single one. Exactly. And also the writing takes a lot of time. For example, if you think about the environment and you wouldn't throw paper away, you wouldn't waste a single page of parchment.

You would write on it just to have it because even the parchment was so expensive. And that's why you wouldn't waste a whole book. You would keep all the books together. And that's why the library as an institution is also stated in the charter. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a treasury. It just is. It's a treasury. Yeah. And we also have a library building in the 15th century, which was next to the main building of the university. Okay, wow. Yeah, that's something.

And we have different libraries because also the faculties had their own libraries. So we have the library of the main building, but also of the faculties. So, yeah, in the 18th century, this whole book treasures were given to what is now the National Library. The National Library. We are very sorry for that because we're talking about handwritten books of medieval times and they're not in the university library anymore. Yeah, it's such a shame.

And I think that's an important thing to talk about because there's an assumption. It's an incorrect assumption that the average person has, but the average person tends to think oh, the Middle Ages, this is backwards, this is stupid, this is full of people who don't really understand the way the world actually works and everything got better.

And I'm constantly trying to say, well, actually, the early modern period is a really difficult time. It is. At the 16th century, 17th century, you have a huge loss of life. You have a real disruption of knowledge in a lot of ways. And so we can see here in the late medieval period, the university is flourishing. I can just look at this chart and, wow, 800-sum students.

And then we get to the 16th century and it just drops. Exactly. And what I would like to point out is that when we talk about medieval times, it often just means that we don't have the information about what actually happened because we don't have documents anymore or it was never written down. So our main problem with medieval history is that we just don't have the sources to know what really happened or the detailed information we have for early modern times, for example. Yeah. So, yeah, what happened at the University of Vienna was that from the 1520s on, more or less, the situation deteriorated dramatically with the number of richest students plummeting within only a few years. In the absence of students, many master's, doctors and professor also left the university. And that's always main issue. And, well, there are several causes for this decline. One was the increasing military threat to Vienna from the, Ottoman Empire. Of course, yeah. And as in 1529, the troops of Sultan Soleiman, the magnificent

late siege to Vienna. And although the Turks had to retreat without capturing the city, the threat was to be felt for several decades thereafter and prevented renounce scholars to accept appointments at the university. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And well, without doubt, this situation affected student attendance in a negative way as well. Another development to consider as a major cause of the university's decline was the spread of the Reformation. Of course. Throughout the territories of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1517, Martin Luther wrote his famous 95 thesis.

And during the following 250 years, the educational system in Europe was shaped by the confessional divide between Protestantism and Catholicism. Yeah. So in Vienna, the local Habsburg rulers took care that the university remained loyal to the Pope. Of course. And since the third decade of... the 16th century, the student catchment area of the University of Vienna was reduced to the territories under Habsburg rule. And even from there, many students preferred universities with a Protestant

denomination, for instance, Wittenberg. The University of Vienna managed to survive this crisis only through the intervention of the sovereign Habsburg princes, although at the cost of the extensive reduction of its medieval autonomy and privileges. That makes sense, because if you're going to then go to the princes and say, hey, can you save us? They're going to want you to do things that they want. Exactly. Who's paying the bills around here? Exactly. In the end, it meant that in the middle of the 16th century, the Jesuits came to Austria, came to Vienna. And, well, it meant that the Jesuits were integrated into the university system in the 1620s. And that's how the early modern age developed and the university became one of Jesuit universities of Europe.

I think that this story of medieval universities is so interesting because they are this real, very obvious place of power and prestige and a way of showing that your city has arrived. Vienna is on the world stage now. We're a center of learning. We are as important as anywhere else. And in the 15th century, you know, more important than other places. And these things can change so quickly when you have just the new ideas of Protestantism or humanism or all of these things come along. And it really fractures this community. So sure, on the one hand, it's a great thing for world learning to have a lot of ideas. It's a great thing to have debate and other ways of seeing and thinking about the world.

But there's a loss. There is a loss because every change also implies that there is a loss of also knowledge. If we think about the vision of Rudolf, we also see that he had lots of ideas which in the end didn't take place. Yep. Because there was a lack of possibilities. That's just the story of the Holy Roman Empire, isn't it? It's always emperors and popes trying to show they're the most powerful, they're the one that can make these decisions. They're the ones that put a city on the map.

They're the ones that start a university. They're the one who decides who the bishop is. It doesn't matter what it is. Emperors and popes are going to find a way to fight about it. These are these complex institutions. They have roots in monarchical structures. They have roots in church structures. They're meant to set up within a city and serve it

and make it a bigger and more important place, but people in the city have problems with it. They are staffed by members of the church, but the church doesn't always like what's going on in the university. Yes, it's a continuous giving and taking of both sides. Well, Nea, thank you so, so much for making the time for me today and showing me these incredible treasures. It's just been such a treat for me.

Well, it's been a pleasure for me to talk to you and to, well, talk also about university history and Vienna. Thank you. This has been Gone at Evil by History Hit, and if you like what you heard, don't forget to rate, review, follow the podcast and tell your friends about it

and the Habsburgs. If you fancy suggesting an episode, you can drop us an email at gonemaneval at historyhit.com. Otherwise, I'll be back again next Tuesday for another episode, and my co-host, Matt Lewis, will be back on Friday.

Until next time.