The boy Luther went to the village school in Mansfeld, and endured the cruelties of a merciless pedagogue. He was sent for a year, in 1497, to a school of the Brethren of the Common Lot in Magdeburg. Then he went to St. George’s school in Eisenach, where he remained three years. He was a “poor scholar,” which meant a boy who received his lodging and education free, was obliged to sing in the church choir, and was allowed to sing in the streets, begging for food. The whole town was under the spell of St. Elizabeth, the pious landgravine, who had given up family life and all earthly comforts to earn a mediæval saintship. It contained nine monasteries and nunneries, many of them dating back to the days of St. Elizabeth; her good deeds were emblazoned on the windows of the church in which Luther sang as choir-boy; he had long conversations with the monks who belonged to her foundations. The boy was being almost insensibly attracted to that revival of the mediæval religious life which was the popular religious force of these days. He had glimpses of the old homely evangelical piety, this time accompanied by a refinement of manners Luther had hitherto been unacquainted with, in the house of a lady who is identified by biographers with a certain Frau Cotta. The boy enjoyed it intensely, and his naturally sunny nature expanded under its influence. But it did not touch him religiously. He has recorded that it was with incredulous surprise that he heard his hostess say that there was nothing on earth more lovely than the love of husband and wife, when it is in the fear of the Lord. After three years’ stay at Eisenach, Luther entered the University of Erfurt (1501), then the most famous in Germany. It had been founded in 1392 by the burghers of the town, who were intensely proud of their own University, and especially of the fact that it had far surpassed other seats of learning which owed their origin to princes. The academic and burgher life were allied at Erfurt as they were in no other University town. The days of graduation were always town holidays, and at the graduation processions the officials of the city walked with the University authorities. Luther tells us that when he first saw the newly made graduates marching in their new graduation robes in the middle of the procession, he thought that they had attained to the summit of earthly felicity. The University of Erfurt was also strictly allied to the Church. Different Popes had enriched it with privileges; the Primate of Germany, the Archbishop of Mainz, was its Chancellor: many of its professors held ecclesiastical prebends, or were monks; each faculty was under the protection of a tutelary saint; the teachers had to swear to teach nothing opposed to the doctrines of the Roman Church; and special pains were taken to prevent the rise and spread of heresy.