link between the {81} Humanists of Strasburg, Augsburg and Nuremberg. In order to interpret this feature of the Emperor's character, we must present a slight sketch of the German Renaissance in its three main channels, with especial regard to Maximilian and his connexion with the leading Humanists, and must then proceed to examine Maximilian's own literary achievements, and his relations to Science and Art in its various branches. In a quaint old comedy written at the close of the fifteenth century, Cicero and Caesar are brought to life and taken round the cities of Germany. They are made to describe Strasburg as "the most beautiful of the German towns, a treasure and ornament of the Fatherland"; of Augsburg they exclaim, "Rome with its Quirites has wandered here"; while Nuremberg is pictured as "the Corinth of Germany, if one looks at the wonderful works of the artist; yet if you look at its walls and bastions, no Mummius would conquer it so easily."[97] Such are the three great centres of the German Renaissance. In Strasburg, education was the most crying need of the time; for though there were excellent schools in the Franciscan and Dominican convents, these were reserved for novices, the laity being wholly excluded. Jacob Wimpheling, under whom Humanism first took deep root in the city, was himself a pupil of the Deventer School,[98] and, like them, {82} devoted his energies to educational reform. His hopes of founding a University were not realized, and he had to content himself with forming the centre of a literary society, such as was formed both at Mainz and Vienna by Conrad Celtes. Wimpheling and his friends differ largely from their contemporaries in other parts of Germany. They were characterized by a theological bias which led them into violent and unprofitable controversies. Though himself a cleric, and thus a supporter of the spiritual order and of orthodox belief, he indulged in fierce attacks upon the monks for their immorality, and in spite of his admiration for heathen authors, he pushed his defence of theology so far as to condemn the Art of Poetry as useless and unworthy to be called a science, and only to exempt from utter damnation the sacred poets of Christianity.[99] He was equally limited in his patriotic polemics. His praise of everything German is only surpassed by his hatred for the French and Italians, his profound contempt for the Swiss. His best-known work, entitled _Germania_, was written with the double object of proving the exclusively German origin of Alsace and of "defending the King of the Romans against the monks and secular preachers who attack him."[100] Even the ingenuous arguments in which the book abounds, and the quaint array of authorities, from Caesar and Tacitus to Aeneas Sylvius and Sabellico cannot blind us to the genuine patriotism, which is latent in every page. "We are Germans, not French," he exclaims, "and our land must be called Germany, not France, because Germans live in it.