[10] Wittenberg, founded in 1502 as a new-learning university, and in which Luther, Melanchthon, and Bugenhagen were professors, was the first of the universities to become Protestant. Gradually the other universities in Protestant Germany threw off their allegiance to the Pope, and took on that of the ruling prince.
[11] The first Protestant university to be founded was Marburg, in Hesse, in 1527. When this later went over to Calvinism, a new university was founded at Giessen, in 1607, by a migration of the Lutheran professors. Other Protestant universities founded were Königsberg (1544) Jena (1555), Helmstadt (1576), and the free-city universities of Altdorf (1573), Strassburg (1621), Rinteln (1621), Duisberg (1655) and Kiel (1665). The support of these came, to a considerable extent, from old monastic or ecclesiastical foundations which had been dissolved after the Reformation.
[12] This was in response to a petition to the King, nearly two years before. The King finally granted the request, "though maintaining that he was not compelled by God's Word to set forth the Scriptures in English, yet 'of his own liberality and goodness was and is pleased that his said loving subjects should have and read the same in convenient places and times.'" (Procter and Frere, History of the Book of Common Prayer, p. 30.)
[13] "The injunctions directed that 'a Bible of the largest volume in English' be set up in some convenient place in every church, where it might be read, only without noise, or disturbance of any public service, and without any disputation, or exposition." (Ibid., p. 30.)
[14] The right to read the Bible was later revoked, during the closing years of Henry VIII's reign (d. 1547), by an act of Parliament, in 1543, which provided that "no woman (unless she be a noble or gentle woman), no artificers, apprentices, journeymen, servingmen, under the degree of yeomen … husbandmen, or laborers" should read or use any part of the Bible under pain of fines and imprisonment.
[15] These were, distributed by reigns, as follows:
Henry VIII (1509-1547) 63 schools
Edward VI (1547-1553) 50 "
Mary (1553-1558) 19 "
Elizabeth (1558-1603) 138 "
James I (1603-1625)
Charles I (1625-1649) 142 "
Protectorate (1649-1660)
Charles II (1660-1685)
James II (1685-1688) 146 "
CHAPTER XIV
[1] "These Calvinists had a common program of broad scope—not merely doctrinal, but also political, economic, and social. Their common program and their social ideals demanded education of all as instruments of Providence for church and commonwealth. Their industrious habits and productive economic life provided funds for education. Their representative institutions in both church and commonwealth not only necessitated general diffusion of knowledge, but furnished the organization necessary for founding, supervising, and maintaining, in wholesome touch with the common man, both elementary and higher institutions of learning. Their disciplined and responsive conscience, their consequent intensity of moral conviction and spirit of self- sacrifice for the common weal, compelled them to realize, in concrete and permanent form, their ideals of college and common school." (Foster, H. D., In Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education, vol. i, p. 499.)
[2] In 1625 a list of the famous men of the city of Louvain, in Belgium, was printed. More than one fourth of those listed had studied in the colleges of Geneva.