of the Order carried him in May, 1512, to the Chapter at Cologne, where the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him. During his preparation for his doctorate he already began, urged on by Staupitz, to preach in the monastery church at Wittenberg, where the Elector once heard him and was filled with admiration. He was also always ready to assist others with their work, as for instance when he prepared for the Provost the address to be delivered before the Synod at Leitzkau. And when at thirty years of age, in October, 1515, he undertook, as Doctor, to deliver the _lectura in biblia_ at the University of Wittenberg, this was not in his case the commencement of a career of learned leisure, but the filling of a position encumbered with the cure of souls, with preaching and much monastic business. In view of his defective education in theology properly so called, we may well raise the question how, without any thorough knowledge of the subject, he could feel himself summoned to undertake such far-reaching theological changes. “At the parting of the ways,” says Denifle, regarding Luther’s knowledge of theology, “and even when he had already set up his first momentous theses and declared war on Scholasticism, he was still but half-educated.... He knew nothing of the golden age of Scholasticism, and was even unacquainted with the doctor of his own Order [who followed the greater Schoolmen] Ægydius of Rome.” “He was a self-taught, not a methodically trained, man.”[299] In spite of his self-reliance, a feeling of the insufficiency of his education seems to have tormented him at the outset. We should not perhaps be justified in accepting what he said in later years, that he had at first “been greatly afraid of the pulpit” even when (in his second stay at Wittenberg) it was only a question of preaching “in the Refectory before the brethren.”[300] But according to his own statement, he expressed very strongly to Staupitz his fear of taking the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and two years later he declared that he had only yielded to pressure.[301] But Staupitz, who urged him forward with excessive zeal, had said in his presence when Luther preached before the Elector: “I will prepare for Your Highness in this man a very special Doctor, who will please you well,” words which the Elector did not forget and of which he reminded Staupitz in 1518.[302]