To take some instances from districts with which Luther must have been fairly well acquainted: Zwickau had a flourishing Latin school which, in 1490, numbered 900 pupils divided into four classes. In 1518 instruction was given there in Greek and Hebrew, and bequests, ecclesiastical and secular, for its maintenance continued to be made. The town of Brunswick had two Latin schools and, besides, three schools belonging to religious communities. At Nuremberg, towards the close of the 15th century, there were several Latin schools controlled by four rectors and twelve assistants; a new “School of Poetry” was added in 1515 under Johann Cochlæus. Augsburg also had five Church schools at the commencement of the 16th century, and besides this private teachers with a humanistic training were engaged in teaching Latin and the fine arts. At Frankfurt-on-the-Main there were, in 1478, three foundation schools with 318 pupils; the college at Schlettstadt in Alsace numbered 900 pupils in 1517 and Geiler of Kaysersberg and Jakob Wimpfeling were both educated there. At Görlitz in Silesia, at the close of the 15th century, the number of scholars varied between 500 and 600. Emmerich on the lower Rhine had, in 1510, approximately 450 pupils in its six classes, in 1521 about 1500. Münster in Westphalia, owing to the labours of its provost, Rudolf von Langen, became the focus and centre of humanistic effort, and, subsequent to 1512, had also its pupils divided into six classes.[110] The “Brothers of the Common Life” established their schools over the whole of Northern Germany. Their institutions, with which Luther himself had the opportunity of becoming acquainted at Magdeburg, sent out some excellent schoolmasters. The schools of these religious at Deventer, Zwolle, Liège and Louvain were famous. The school of the brothers at Liège numbered in 1521 1600 pupils, assorted into eight classes. In the lands of the Catholic princes many important grammar-schools withstood the storms of the religious revulsion, so that Luther’s statements concerning the total downfall of education cannot be accepted as generally correct, even subsequent to the first decades of the century. Nor were even the elementary schools neglected at the close of the Middle Ages in most parts of the German Empire. Fresh accounts of such schools, in both town and country, are constantly cropping up to-day in the local histories. Constant efforts for their improvement and multiplication were made at this time. About a hundred regulations and charters of schools either in German, or in Dutch, dating from 1400-1521 have been traced. The popular religious handbooks were zealous in advocating the education of the people.[111] Luther himself tells us it was the custom to stir up the schoolmasters to perform their duty by saying that “to neglect a scholar is as bad as to seduce a maid.”[112] _Luther’s Success_