In the same year that the above writing appeared steps were taken at
Magdeburg for the promotion of education, and Cruciger, Luther’s own
pupil, was summoned from Wittenberg to assume the direction. Melanchthon
and Luther repaired to Eisleben in 1525, where Count Albert of Mansfeld
had founded a Grammar School. In some towns the Councillors carried
out Luther’s proposals, in others, where the town-council was opposed
to the innovators and their schools, the burghers “set at naught the
Council,” as Luther relates, and erected “schools and parsonages”; in
other words, they established schools as the best means to further
the new Evangel.[9] At Nuremberg Melanchthon, a zealous promoter of
education, exerted himself for the foundation of a “Gymnasium” which was
to serve as a model of the new humanistic schools of the Evangelicals,
and which was generously provided for by the town. May 6, 1526, saw the
opening of this new school. Learned masters were appointed, for instance,
Melanchthon’s friend Camerarius, the poet Eobanus Hessus and the humanist
Michael Roting. In 1530 Luther speaks of it in words meant to flatter the
Nurembergers as “a fine, noble school,” for which the “very best men”
had been selected and appointed. He even tells all Germany, that “no
University, not even that of Paris itself, was ever so well provided in
the way of lecturers”; it was in no small measure owing to this school
that “Nuremberg now shone throughout the whole of Germany like a sun,
compared with which others were but moon and stars.”[10]
Yet it was certain disagreeable happenings at Nuremberg itself which
led him to write in 1530 his second booklet in favour of the schools.
In the flourishing commercial city there were many wealthy burghers who
refused to send their children to the “Gymnasium,” thinking that, instead
of learning ancient languages, they would be more usefully occupied in
acquiring other elements of knowledge more essential to the mercantile
calling; by so doing they had raised a certain feeling against the new
school. Many were even disposed to scoff at all book-learning and roundly
declared, as Luther relates, “If my son knows how to read and reckon then
he knows quite enough; we now have plenty German books,” etc.[11]
In July of the above year, Luther, in the loneliness of the Coburg,
penned a sermon having for its title “That children must be kept at
school.” The sermon grew into a lengthy work; Luther himself was, later
on, to bewail its long-windedness.[12] This writing, taken with that of
1524, supplies the gist of Luther’s teaching with regard to the schools.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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