Zu den Anfangen der Strassburger Universitat. Neue Forschungsergebnisse zur Herkunft derStudentenschaft und zur verlorenen Matrikel. by Gerhard Meyer; Hans-Georg Rott; MatthiasMeyerReview by: Joel F. HarringtonThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Winter, 1990), pp. 738-739Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2542240 .

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738 The Sixteenth Century Journal XXI/4 / 1990

Cycles of the virtues and vices, indeed, medieval allegory in general, is a topic central to any advanced examination of aspects of the Middle Ages. This book also touches on other themes of importance, such as the transmission and transformation of classical types and ideas. Katzenellenbogen was a scholar of significant accomplish- ments: his piece on "The Central Tympanum at Vezelay" for the Art Bulletin (1944) and his book The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral: Christ-Mary-Ecclesia (1959) are still fundamental. This reprint makes an important text available and affordable, and that is a notable enough achievement to make it sound like carping to wish for a peppier translation (this is the original 1939 translation by Alan J. P. Crick, made necessary because the author, newly arrived in London as a political refugee, had not yet gained complete command of English). One might also dream about a more attractive print face, page layout, and better quality illustrations, but all of this would require a new edition, not a reprint. For now it is enough to be grateful for the opportunity to discover anew the Warburg method in the hands of one of its most gifted masters working on a subject of great importance, and to be able to share the discovery with advanced students. Linda Caron ................... Wright State University

Zu den Anfangen der Strassburger Universitat. Neue For- schungsergebnisse zur Herkunft der Studentenschaft und zur verlorenen Matrikel. Gerhard Meyer, ed. Hans-Georg Rott and Matthias Meyer. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1989. 262 pp. DM 49,80 Volume 11 in the series Historiche Texte und Studien, this book is a tributory

compilation of assorted material from the late Gerhard Meyer's Nachlass. The work has three principal parts. The first includes a brief biography and bibliography of Meyer, long director of the Niedersachsischen Landesbibliothek in Hannover and co-editor of a fifty-one volume collection of the writings of Count Zinzendorf. The second part, fully half of the book, consists of chronological and alphabetical lists of baccalaureate magisterial students at the Strassbourg Academy from 1585-1621, including an analysis of places of origin (mostly the city itself, but an impressive regional distribution throughout Germany and Poland). The original manuscripts of these were destroyed during bombing raids in 1944 (the "lost material" in the book's subtitle), so the copy made by Meyer during his dissertation work in 1926 has indeed become a valuable document in itself.

The third part of the book is a reprint of Meyer's 1926 published doctoral work, about 100 pages, on the origins of the University of Strassbourg. Unlike many such contemporary institutions, the University of Strassbourg was not created ex nihilo by act of prince or king, but evolved out of the municipal Academy/Gymnasium founded in 1537 by Johann Sturm, brother of the famous reformer. Recently expelled from the Colleges de Paris for his reformist sympathies, the young Sturm readily embraced the city council's assignment with a missionary zeal that would sustain him for more than fifty years as the academy's guiding force. Indeed, above all else, it was the determination and ideals of Sturm alone that Meyer considers most responsible for the academy's high reputation before ultimately attaining university status in 1621.

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Book Reviews 739

Meyer bases his brief reconstruction of the academy's intellectual life on an often uneven mixture of primary and secondary sources, the former including baccalaureate and magisterial examinations, academic ordinances, course catalogs, disputes, public addresses, etc. What is most striking in all of these records is the undisputable humanist character of Sturm's academy, obvious in his own pedagogical motto of "sapiens und eloquens pietas" [sic]. Both baccalaureate and magisterial exams clearly valued elegance of expression and persuasion much more than scholastic learning, with special emphasis on knowledge of classical philosophy and literature. Not surprisingly, many theologians and other opponents in the academy and the city resented Sturm's attempts to reconcile Athens and Jerusalem, often resulting in violent conflicts between the two factions. For quite a while, for instance, neither Sturm nor any of his allies would walk the city's streets without a protective phalanx of like-minded students.

In the final analysis, Meyer is of two minds on the success of Sturm's emphasis on "active pursuit of knowledge" at the academy. On the one hand, he finds relationships among noble and bourgeois students incredibly democratic, typified by a spirit of "freethinking, full of youthly vigor and optimism about the future" (196). Yet, at the very apex of their frequent debates on public and private responsibility-the public disputations-these same students invariably reverted to the class distinctions that separated them outside the academy's walls, allowing only nobles to introduce topics for debate. The four faculties-philosophy, theology, law, and medicine-displayed similar conservatism, consistently resisting all attempts by Sturm and others to introduce any "foreign" (i.e., French) lectures and ideas, with the notable exception of the already fashionable mos gallicus in legal studies.

Meyer's most significant contribution here to the study of sixteenth-century pedagogy and university life-beyond the "lost" matriculation lists-is his analysis of the questions and responses of student examinations. Modern scholars will otherwise be disappointed with the extremely cursory consideration of larger connec- tions, particularly between humanism and the Reformation in Strassbourg, as well as any comparison to medieval or contemporary institutions. Still, as the Gothic type of the facsimile reminds us, this is an unrevised sixty-four year old dissertation; some narrowness of focus, however undesired, may at least be expected.

Joel F. Harrington .............. . Vanderbilt University

Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method. Carlo Ginzburg, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. xvii + 231 pp. $24.95.

Carlo Ginzburg, who has earned lasting fame for The Cheese and the Worms (1980), has authored a collection of eight essays on a wide-range of themes, which (with the exception of the final one, "The Inquisitor as Anthropologist") were previously published between 1961 and 1984. All eight chapters have been ably translated from the Italian by John and Anne Tedeschi. In an autobiographical preface, Ginzburg attempts to detect a thread of continuity that binds his essays together in some meaningful way and points in the direction "where I am now" (xiii).

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