Under such circumstances the recovery of Austria by Maximilian was greeted with joy on the part of the authorities, and immediate steps were taken to restore the tottering fabric of the University. Maximilian set himself definitely to transform it from a clerical corporation to a home of the new Humanism, and was aided in this difficult task by the Superintendent Perger, the intention of whose office was not only to control the Government grants, but also to decide upon their expenditure, and to refer to the Emperor all questions of professorial appointments. In spite of much internal opposition, the Humanists ere long acquired predominance in the philosophical Faculty, the medicals threw off the monstrous requirements of Scholasticism, and the jurists began to study Roman as well as ecclesiastical law. The revival of Vienna soon roused the interest of that peculiar product of the Renaissance period, the wandering scholar. The first to visit the University was Johann Spiesshaimer--more celebrated as Cuspinian--who rapidly won favour with the Hapsburgs by a poem in praise of St. Leopold, Markgrave of Austria, and {100} who was crowned poet by Maximilian shortly after his father's death, in presence of a brilliant and representative assembly. Soon afterwards he began to hold regular lectures on poetry and rhetoric, discussing such writers as Cicero, Sallust, Horace, Virgil and Lucan. But Perger's preference lay decidedly with the Humanists of Italy, many of whom he had known personally during his residence at Padua and Bologna. At his recommendation, Maximilian in 1493 summoned Hieronymus Balbus from Venice to Vienna, and appointed him lecturer on the Roman Poets. But the Italian's fiery temper soon led him into disputes with the University authorities, and after an unsatisfactory career of two years he found a fresh outbreak of plague in the city a convenient pretext for returning to Italy. Krachenberger and Fuchsmagen, the two councillors whom Maximilian had appointed to assist Perger, doubtless influenced by the unseemly brawling of Balbus, were loud in their complaints of Perger's favouritism, and urged their Imperial master to encourage German rather than Italian scholars. But Maximilian was, after all, only following his own judgment, when in 1497 he sent a cordial invitation to Stabius and Celtes to fill professorships at Vienna.