(2) Latin schools (_Particularschulen_), with five or six classes, in which the ability to read, write, and speak Latin, together with the elements of mathematics and Greek in the last year, were to be taught. (3) The universities or colleges of the State, of which the University of Tübingen (f. 1476) and the higher school at Stuttgart were declared to be constituent parts. Acting through the church authorities, these schools were to be under the supervision of the State. The example of Würtemberg was followed by a number of the smaller German States. Ten years later Brunswick followed the same plan, and in 1580 Saxony revised its school organization after the state-system plan thus established. In 1619 the Duchy of Weimar added compulsory education in the vernacular for all children from six to twelve years of age. In 1642, the same date as the first Massachusetts school law (chapter XV), Duke Ernest the Pious of little Saxe-Gotha and Altenburg established the first school system of a modern type in German lands. An intelligent and ardent Protestant, he attempted to elevate his miserable peasants, after the ravages of the Thirty Years' War, by a wise economic administration and universal education. With the help of a disciple of the greatest educational thinker of the period, John Amos Comenius (chapter XVII), he worked out a School Code (_Schulmethode_, 1642) which was the pedagogic masterpiece of the seventeenth century (R. 163). In it he provided for compulsory school attendance, and regulated the details of method, grading, and courses of study. Teachers were paid salaries which for the time were large, pensions for their widows and children were provided, and textbooks were prepared and supplied free. So successful were his efforts that Gotha became one of the most prosperous little spots in Europe, and it was said that "Duke Ernest's peasants were better educated than noblemen anywhere else." By the middle of the seventeenth century most of the German States had followed the Würtemberg plan of organization. Even Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, which was a Catholic State, ordered the establishment of "German schools" throughout his realm, with instruction in reading, writing, and the Catholic creed, the schools to be responsible through the Church to the State.