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ABSTRACT
When the newly appointed professor of medicine at the University of Rinteln, Johann Peter Lotichius (1598–1669), delivered an oration entitled Oratio super fatalibus hoc tempore academiarum in Germania periculis (“Oration on the pernicious dangers to the universities of contemporary Germany”) at said university in February 1631, the war, which later came to be known as the Thirty Years’ War, had already been in full swing for more than a decade. Driven by his personal experience of trying to build an academic career amidst military confrontations, he rendered a disconcerting, yet dead serious account of bad students, bad teachers, bad customs, bad times, and how these factors mutually influence each other to produce bad education. With his speech, situated at the crossroads between the humanist criticism of academic life and the conventions of the Miseria-saeculi-theme, Lotichius took a moralising stance towards education that was closely tied to the socio-political struggles of his time. This article will not only disclose the literary and educational motives on which Lotichius’ Oratio thrives, but also highlight some of its idiosyncrasies. In addition, the oration will be unveiled as a textual witness of the intellectual havoc the Thirty Years’ War wrought on the German universities in general and the historically still under-researched University of Rinteln in particular.
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Notes
1 The period of university foundations between the foundation of the Universities of Marburg (1527) and Kiel (1665) has been often referred to – especially in older literature – as the third of four big foundation waves that hit the German Empire: see Helmut Schelsky, Einsamkeit und Freiheit: Idee und Gestalt der deutschen Universität und ihrer Reformen (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1963), 17.
2 Howard Hotson, “A Dark Golden Age: The Thirty Years War and the Universities of Northern Europe,” in Ships, Guns and Bibles in the North Sea and Baltic States c.1350–c.1700, ed. Allan McInnes, Thomas Riis, and Frederik Pedersen (East Linton: Tuckwell, 2000), 235–6.
3 Notker Hammerstein, “Zur Geschichte und Bedeutung der Universitäten im Heiligen Römischen Reich Deutscher Nation,” Historische Zeitschrift 241 (1985): 287. Some failed foundation efforts are discussed in Sönke Lorenz, “Fehlgeschlagen, gescheitert, erfolglos: Vergebliche Versuche von Universitätsgründungen in Regensburg, Lüneburg, Breslau und Pforzheim,” in Attempto – oder wie stiftet man eine Universität Die Universitätsgründungen der sogenannten zweiten Gründungswelle im Vergleich, ed. Sönke Lorenz (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1999), 7–18.
4 The foundation of Rinteln University is treated in Bernhart Jähnig, “Gründung und Eröffnung der Universität Rinteln,” Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 45 (1973): 351–60; Gerhard Schormann, Academia Ernestina: Die Schaumburgische Universität zu Rinteln an der Weser 1618/21–1810 (Marburg: Elwert, 1982); and Gerhard Menk, “Die schaumburgische Hohe Schule in der Universitätslandschaft des Reiches in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Zur Geschichte der Erziehung und Bildung in Schaumburg, ed. Hubert Höing (Bielefeld: Aschendorff, 2007), 404–35.
5 The date is evident from the title page of the print (Rinteln: Lucius, 1631): “Oratio … Publice recitata In Academia Rintelensi ad Visurgim M.DC.XXXI. IV Id. Febr.” (“Oration … publicly held at the University of Rinteln an der Weser on the fourth Ides of February 1631”). As there is no modern edition of the Oratio, I will quote from the print for the rest of this article. All translations are mine.
6 John Theibault, “The Rhetoric of Death and Destruction in the Thirty Years War,” Journal of Social History 27 (1993): 273: “The thousands of descriptions of despair produced during the Thirty Years War are a notable, yet underappreciated, example of the effort to persuade. It is one of the most persistent ways in which the situation of ordinary people was presented to a wider audience.”
7 The general lack of knowledge regarding the history of the German university during the Thirty Years’ War has been recently diagnosed by Marian Füssel, “Akademischer Sittenverfall? Studentenkultur vor, in und nach der Zeit des Dreißigjährigen Krieges,” Militär und Gesellschaft in der frühen Neuzeit 15 (2011): 125, and Thomas Kossert, “Inter arma silent litterae? Universitäten im Dreißigjährigen Krieg,” Militär und Gesellschaft in der frühen Neuzeit 15 (2011): 9. All we have so far are some case studies on selected universities, e.g. Hermann Mayer, “Freiburg i. Br. und seine Universität im Dreißigjährigen Krieg,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Beförderung der Geschichts-, Altertums- und Volkskunde von Freiburg, dem Breisgau und den angrenzenden Landschaften 26 (1910): 124–88; Volker Press, Bernhard Zaschka, Die Lehrstühle der Universität Tübingen im Dreißigjährigen Krieg: Zur sozialen Wirklichkeit von Professoren im vorklassischen Zeitalter (Tübingen: Attempto, 1993); “Kurfürst Maximilian I. von Bayern, die Jesuiten und die Universität Heidelberg im Dreißigjährigen Krieg 1622–1649,” in Semper Apertus: 600 Jahre Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg 1386–1986, Bd. 1, ed. Wilhelm Doerr (Berlin: Springer, 1985), 314–70. Comparative studies on the status of different universities during the Thirty Years’ War are provided in Hotson, “Dark Golden Age,” 235–70; Matthias Asche, Susanne Häcker, and Patrick Schiele, “Studieren im Krieg: Die Universitäten entlang des Rheins im (Wind-)Schatten des Dreißigjährigen Krieges,” in Krieg und Kriegserfahrung im Westen des Reiches 1568–1714, ed. Andreas Rutz (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2016), 205–36; Howard Hotson, “Catchment Areas and Killing Fields: Towards an Intellectual Geography of the Thirty Years’ War,” in Geographies of the University, ed. Peter Meusburger, Michael Heffernan, and Laura Suarsana (Cham: Springer, 2018), 135–92; and the special issue no. 15 (2011) of the journal Militär und Gesellschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit, entitled “Universitäten im Dreißigjährigen Krieg,” ed. Thomas Kossert. The reason why especially the University of Rinteln has mostly been ignored in the context of seventeenth-century academic history is that almost all the archival material pertaining to the university was lost or destroyed when the university was cancelled in 1809. Only the deans’ record of the medical faculty from 1684 onwards and the statutes have survived. The latter are edited and translated in Die Statuten der Universität Rinteln/Weser 1621–1809: Die lateinischen Originalstatuten ins Deutsche übersetzt, ed. Herbert Kater (Munich: Vögel, 1992).
8 The most detailed information is contained in Friedrich Wilhelm Strieder, Grundlage zu einer Hessischen Gelehrten und Schriftsteller Geschichte seit der Reformation bis auf gegenwärtige Zeiten, Bd. 8 (Göttingen: Cramer, 1788), 100–7; August Heimpel, “Johann Peter Lotichius, ein Hanauer Arzt und Gelehrter im 30jährigen Krieg,” Hanauisches Magazin 12 (1933): 25–30; Dieter Wessinghage, Die Hohe Schule zu Herborn und ihre Medizinische Fakultät: 1584–1817–1984 (Stuttgart: Schattauer, 1984), 50–5; John Flood, Poets Laureate in the Holy Roman Empire: A Bio-Bibliographical Handbook, Vol. 3 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006), 1195–7. The following overview of Lotichius’ life is collectedly taken from these sources.
9 The so-called Hohe Schulen (illustrious schools) constituted a particular phenomenon of the early modern German academic landscape. Blending the institution of grammar schools and universities, those institutions usually consisted of at least two higher faculties and often enjoyed a better reputation than the universities (especially the philosophical faculty was in higher esteem at illustrious schools than at universities). For more information on the German illustrious schools, see Willem T. M. Frijhoff, “University, Academia, Hochschule, College: Early Modern Perceptions and Realities of European Institutions of Higher Education,” in Zwischen Konflikt und Kooperation: Praktiken der europäischen Gelehrtenkultur (12.–17. Jahrhundert), ed. Jan-Hendryk de Boer, Marian Füssel, and Jana Madlen Schütte (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2016), 74–5.
10 Doctors were highly requested during the 1630s, when the Thirty Years’ War reached its sad climax in terms of terror and bloodshed: Flood, Poets Laureate, 1195; see also Olav Laubinger, “Krankheit und ärztliche Tätigkeit im Dreißigjährigen Krieg: Landgraf Philipp III. von Hessen-Butzbach und sein Leibarzt und Reisebegleiter Dr. Georg Faber” (PhD diss., Marburg University, 2010).
11 The most comprehensive lists of Lotichius’ diverse oeuvre can be found in Strieder, Grundlage, 103–7, and Flood, Poets Laureate, 1196–7.
12 Lotichius, Oratio, 14−5; 18−9; 25−6; 35−6.
13 Lotichius, Oratio, 17; 63−4.
14 Lotichius, Oratio, 17−8.
15 Lotichius, Oratio, 41−52.
16 Lotichius, Oratio, 22−5; 88−91.
17 This classical pattern (sometimes also split into six parts) became increasingly obsolete in the Early Modern Period, when the delivery of speeches was mostly reduced to occasional oratory – as was the case with academic oratory. Occasional oratory changed the nature of the rhetorical inventio which, in turn, changed the way orations were structured: see John W. O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450–1521 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979), 41.
18 Lotichius, Oratio, 3−12.
19 Brage bei der Wieden, Außenwelt und Anschauungen Ludolf von Münchhausens (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1993), 51–72.
20 Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, “Management and Resources,” in A History of the University in Europe: Vol. 2: Universities in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800), ed. Hilde de Ridder-Symoens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 196. Further information on the development of the university library is offered in Hugo Kunoff, The Foundations of the German Academic Library (Chicago: American Library Association, 1982), and William Clark, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006), 297–335.
21 Lotichius, Oratio, 6.
22 Lotichius, Oratio, 13−39.
23 Lotichius, Oratio, 28.
24 Lotichius, Oratio, 40−52. To use the term academia instead of universitas to refer to the early modern university in the German Empire became common practice since the foundation of Wittenberg University in 1502, the first institution to be deliberately labelled in its statutes as an academia. This branding entailed the moving away from the concept of the medieval studium generale, instead implying anti-scholastic attitudes, the introduction of a new canon of disciplines (like botany or oriental languages), and a set of novel methods: Frijhoff, “University, Academia, Hochschule, College,” 70–1.
25 The quote can be found in Lotichius, Oratio, 42; the overview of the German foundations is given on pages 48−50.
26 Lotichius, Oratio, 52−82.
27 Lotichius, Oratio, 82−91.
28 Wessinghage claims the Oratio marked Lotichius’ inauguration as the rector of Rinteln University in 1630 (Hohe Schule zu Herborn, 50), yet it is not clear whence Wessinghage takes his information – especially since none of the university’s official documents have survived. The delivery of cross-faculty lectures is regulated in the statutes of Rinteln University: Kater, Statuten der Universität Rinteln, 182–3.
29 Lotichius, Oratio, 88.
30 Lotichius, Oratio, 85.
31 E.g. p. 25: “Seneca, … act. II in Octavia”, or p. 38: “Valer. Max. lib. hist. Rom. 11. cap. 1”.
32 This form of academic self-fashioning practised by university professors as a class (ordo) of their own within the academic system has been studied previously by Clark, Academic Charisma; Marian Füssel, Gelehrtenkultur als symbolische Praxis: Rang, Ritual und Konflikt an der Universität der Frühen Neuzeit (Darmstadt: WBG, 2012); and Richard Kirwan, ed., Scholarly Self-Fashioning and Community in the Early Modern University (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).
33 Sari Kivistö, The Vices of Learning: Morality and Knowledge at Early Modern Universities (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 3.
34 On the issue of reform and its proponents, see Hammerstein, “Geschichte und Bedeutung,” 312–15.
35 Lotichius, Oratio, 52−3.
36 Cf. Richard J.W. Evans, “German Universities after the Thirty Years War,” History of Universities 1 (1981), 172. For more details on the criticism of academia as a central theme of the Pietist movement, see Martin Gierl, Pietismus und Aufklärung: Theologische Polemik und die Kommunikationsreform der Wissenschaft am Ende des 17. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), and Kivistö, Vices of Learning, 13–16 (including Latin text examples).
37 This adage constituted an omnipresent expression of the mid-seventeenth-century cultural pessimism prevailing among humanists and erudites all across the German Empire: cf. Thomas Kossert, “Inter arma silent litterae? Universitäten im Dreißigjährigen Krieg,” Militär und Gesellschaft in der frühen Neuzeit 15 (2011): 9–17; and Hotson, “Dark Golden Age,” 235.
38 The downfall of the universities from 1630 onwards is best mirrored by the matriculation frequency, which is one of the few issues that has been well examined regarding the history of the German university from 1618 to 1648. The first significant study in this regard was Franz Eulenburg, Die Frequenz der deutschen Universitäten von ihrer Gründung bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig: Teubner, 1904; repr. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994). A critical analysis and correction of Eulenburg’s statistical mistakes can be found in Willem T. M. Frijhoff, “Surplus ou déficit? Hypothèses sur le nombre réel des étudiants en Allemagne à l’époque moderne (1576–1815),” Francia 7 (1979): 173–218. Most recent updates are available in Hotson, “Dark Golden Age,” 235–70, and “Catchment Areas,” 135–92. Important case studies constitute Uwe Alschner, Universitätsbesuch in Helmstedt 1576–1810: Modell einer Matrikelanalyse am Beispiel einer norddeutschen Universität (Braunschweig: Selbstverlag des Braunschweigischen Geschichtsvereins, 1998), and Wenke Richter, “Die vier mitteldeutschen Universitäten in Leipzig, Wittenberg, Jena und Erfurt im Dreißigjährigen Krieg: Eine Frequenzanalyse,” Militär und Gesellschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit 13 (2009): 41–56.
39 Hotson, “Dark Golden Age,” 235–6.
40 Evans, “German Universities,” 169–70; Hammerstein, “Geschichte und Bedeutung,” 310; Maria Rosa di Simone, “Students,” in A History of the University in Europe: Vol. 2: Universities in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800), ed. Hilde de Ridder-Symoens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 304; Hotson, “Dark Golden Age,” 237–9; Matthias Asche, “Der Dreißigjährige Krieg und die Universitäten im Heiligen Römischen Reich: Ein Fazit und viele offene Fragen,” Militär und Gesellschaft in der frühen Neuzeit 15 (2011): 149–50 and 156–7; and Asche, Häcker, and Schiele, “Studieren im Krieg,” 209–10 and 227.
41 Lotichius, Oratio, 78.
42 All examples cited can be found in Lotichius, Oratio, 79−80.
43 On the early modern criticism of erudition in general, see Ludger Schwarte, “Von der Möglichkeit, die Wahrheit zu sagen: Intellektuelle, Experimentalwissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit um 1700,” in Kritik in der Frühen Neuzeit: Intellektuelle avant la lettre, ed. Rainer Bayreuther et al. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011), 245–57; and Füssel, Gelehrtenkultur, 352. On the Gelehrtensatire, see most recently Gunter E. Grimm, Letternkultur: Wissenschaftskritik und antigelehrtes Dichten in Deutschland von der Renaissance bis zum Sturm und Drang (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1998); Pascale Hummel, Mœurs érudites: Essai sur la micrologie littéraire (Allemagne, XVIe–XVIIIe siècles) (Geneva: Droz, 2002); Ronald Dietrich, Der Gelehrte in der Literatur: Literarische Perspektiven zur Ausdifferenzierung des Wissenschaftssystems (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2003); and Alexander Košenina, Der gelehrte Narr: Gelehrtensatire seit der Aufklärung (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003).
44 Kivistö, Vices of Learning, 3.
45 The strategy of hiding criticism behind the mask of mere declamatory exercises (which were typically prone to contradictions and desultory argumentation) to avoid confrontation and censorship is discussed convincingly in Anita Traninger, Disputation, Deklamation, Dialog: Medien und Gattungen europäischer Wissensverhandlungen zwischen Scholastik und Humanismus (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2012).
46 Lotichius’ omission of the University’s involvement in the contemporary witch trials, his formulaic yet repeatedly insistent honouring of the University’s founder Ernst Count of Schaumburg and his family (e.g. Oratio, 85, 87, 88), as well as his hymnic praise of the Ernestina in the concluding poem (Oratio, 88–91) pay witness to his proud attitude.
47 The boom of intellectual criticism of education and erudition from within German university circles around 1700 is highlighted in Füssel, Gelehrtenkultur, 354–5. Kivistö, Vices of Learning, offers a sound examination of respective Latin sources from 1670 to 1730.
48 Wolfgang Heider, Oratio in Prorectorato …, in Wolfgang Heider, Orationum: Vol. II (Jena: Weidner, 1630), 569–95; Oratio Finem Imponens Huic Inavgvrationi …, in Inauguratio Illustris Gymnasii Casimiriani … (Coburg: Hauck, 1605); Hypotyposis Scholastici Boni Simul Et Mali … (Jena: Weidner, 1607). For more information on Heider and his orations, see Ulrich Rasche, “Cornelius relegatus und die Disziplinierung der deutschen Studenten (16. bis frühes 19. Jahrhundert), in Frühneuzeitliche Universitätskulturen: Kulturhistorische Perspektiven auf die Hochschule in Europa, ed. Barbara Krug-Richter and Ruth-E. Mohrmann (Cologne: Böhlau, 2009), 189–90; and Füssel, “Akademischer Sittenverfall,” 139–40.
49 Füssel, “Akademischer Sittenverfall,” 140.
50 This form of textual referentiality is investigated by Evans, “German Universities,” 171; Wilhelm Kühlmann, Gelehrtenrepublik und Fürstenstaat: Entwicklung und Kritik des deutschen Späthumanismus in der Literatur des Barockzeitalters (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1982), 107; and Füssel, “Akademischer Sittenverfall,” 140–3.
51 Kühlmann, Gelehrtenrepublik, 17–8.
52 As examples, take Caspar Hofmann’s oration De barbarie imminente (1578), held at Frankfurt University; Johannes Posselius’ eponymous oration held at Rostock University in 1591; Maturinus Simonius’ De litteris pereuntibus (1602), held at Cologne University; Jacob Bruno’s Oratio de caussis politiori litteraturae ruinam inferentibus (1622), held at Altdorf University. For more insights into the context of the Miseria-saeculi-theme and its use in academic oratory, see Kühlmann, Gelehrtenrepublik, 26 and 31–43.
53 Lotichius, Oratio, 15.
54 This is the English translation by Anthony S. Kline, Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”: A Complete English Translation and Mythological Index (Ann Arbor: Borders Classics, 2004).
55 Lotichius, Oratio, 17.
56 Lotichius, Oratio, 19.
57 Lotichius, Oratio, 26.
58 See Kühlmann, Gelehrtenrepublik, 17–8.
59 Lotichius, Oratio, 32.
60 Hammerstein, “Geschichte und Bedeutung,” 298; Wilhelm Kühlmann, “Pädagogische Konzeptionen,” in Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte, Bd. 1: 15.–17. Jahrhundert: Von der Renaissance und der Reformation bis zum Ende der Glaubenskämpfe, ed. Notker Hammerstein (Munich: Beck, 1996), 154.
61 Lotichius was not the only one holding this view in the seventeenth century. For more information on the practical benefit of education in the German Baroque and early Enlightenment, see Kühlmann, Gelehrtenrepublik, 330–41.
62 31. Lotichius, Oratio, 31. One of the first humanists ever to express this thought was the Italian chancellor and teacher Guarino da Verona, in his inaugural oration on Cicero’s De officiis (1422): see Karl Müllner, ed., “Acht Inauguralreden des Veroneser Guarino und seines Sohnes Battista,” Wiener Studien 18 (1896): 289–9. In the German Protestant world, this idea was widely promulgated by Philip Melanchthon’s inaugural oration De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis, held in 1518 at Wittenberg University. Due to Melanchthon’s influence, this idea even found its way into many statutes of Protestant universities:see Hans-Georg Gundel, ed., Statuta Academiae Marpurgensis deinde Gissensis de anno 1629 (Marburg: Elwert, 1982), 162; Peter Baumgart and Ernst Pitz, eds., Die Statuten der Universität Helmstedt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963), 137.
63 Lotichius, Oratio, 39.
64 Lotichius, Oratio, 40.
65 Kühlmann, Gelehrtenrepublik, 99–100; Jan-Hendryk de Boer, Die Gelehrtenwelt ordnen: Zur Genese des hegemonialen Humanismus um 1500 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 64, e-book, DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-158639-2.
66 Cf. Kühlmann, Gelehrtenrepublik, 20; and Thomas Ellwein, Die deutsche Universität: Vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt a M: Hain, 1992), 38–9.
67 Lotichius, Oratio, 66-7.
68 It seems that the often cited famous examples of teachers giving classes in German are really just famous because of their outrageous singularity (e.g. Thomas Murner’s lecture series on Roman law at Basel University in 1518/19; Paracelsus’ lecture on surgical wound care at Basel University in 1527/28; Andreas Tschernig’s holding of a Collegium Germanicum poeticum at Rostock University in 1642; Christian Weise’s poetic lectures in Leipzig between 1663 and 1665; Christian Thomasius’ lecture on Gratian at Leipzig University in 1687). On lectures given in German before 1800, see Hans-Albrecht Koch, Die Universität: Geschichte einer europäischen Institution (Darmstadt: Primus, 2008), 86–91. The most comprehensive study on the topic still remains Richard Hodermann, “Universitätsvorlesungen in deutscher Sprache um die Wende des 17. Jahrhunderts” (PhD diss., Jena University, 1891).
69 Kater, Statuten der Universität Rinteln, 74–5.
70 A detailed overview of the devil episode is provided in Georg Conrad Horst, Zauber-Bibliothek oder von Zauberei, Theurgie und Mantik, Zauberern, Hexen, und Hexenprozessen, Dämonen, Gespenstern, und Geistererscheinungen, Bd. 5 (Mainz: Kupferberg, 1825), 258–63.
71 Lotichius, Oratio, 21.
72 The connection established between devilish behaviour and academic life might not only generally refer to bad customs practiced by students and professors, but it might also refer to the specific student practice popular during the Thirty Years’ War of dressing up as devils and, in this disguise, waylaying priests: see Max Bauer, Sittengeschichte des deutschen Studententums (Dresden: Aretz, 1926), 115.
73 Horst in Zauber-Bibliothek, 261, calls this poem a “characteristic contribution to the darkest of centuries”. The poem features in Lotichius, Oratio, 23−5.
74 Lotichius, Oratio, 52.
75 Lotichius, Oratio, 70−1.
76 The fullest account of student misbehaviour in the German Empire is still provided in Bauer, Sittengeschichte, 12–13 and 44–107 (including concrete examples from early modern Catholic and Protestant universities). See also Füssel, “Akademischer Sittenverfall,” 128–30.
77 Lotichius, Oratio, 63−6.
78 Lotichius, Oratio, 66.
79 So did the statutes of Rinteln University, along with the banning of duels, nightly tumult, binge eating and drinking, whoring, or the cutting of classes (see Kater, Statuten der Universität Rinteln, 162–71) – to no avail, though.
80 Lotichius, Oratio, 68.
81 Füssel, “Akademischer Sittenverfall,” 131 and 145. Pennalismus as a phenomenon relating to Protestant universities, for the most part, rather than Catholic institutions, is discussed in Marian Füssel, “Riten der Gewalt: Zur Geschichte der akademischen Deposition und des Pennalismus in der frühen Neuzeit,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 32 (2005): 605–48, and Pennalismus: Ein Phänomen protestantischer Universitäten im 17. Jahrhundert, ed. Matthias Hensel (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2014).
82 A well-known text promoting the concordia armorum et bonarum artium constitutes the eponymous speech by the French Jesuit Franciscus Remondus, held at Ingolstadt University in 1615.
83 On the general brutalisation of German students between 1618 and 1648, see Hotson, “Dark Golden Age,” 260; on students’ military actions as defenders of their university towns, see Susanne Häcker, “ … sogar Kriegskameraden trifft man unter euch an: Die Verteidigung von Stadt, Lehre und Glauben durch Heidelberger, Tübinger und Freiburger Universitätstheologen im Dreißigjährigen Krieg,” in Geistliche im Krieg, ed. Franz Brendle and Anton Schindling (Münster: Aschendorff, 2009), 89–100. The raging of the students in Rinteln is documented in Hermann Stünkel, Rinteln im 30jährigen Kriege: Eine Chronik (Rinteln: Bösendahl, 1952), 89–90.
84 Stünkel, Rinteln, 24 and 32.
85 Hammerstein, “Geschichte und Bedeutung,” 311; and Asche, “Der Dreißigjährige Krieg,” 154 and 160–1.
86 One only needs to look at various university records describing professorial riots in town, professors duelling soldiers and peasants, or professors getting rough at disputation ceremonies. Exemplary episodes are, for instance, covered in Ellwein, Die deutsche Universität, 93–4; Fidel Rädle, “Pietas et mores – Rebellion und Gewalt: Studentenleben in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Syntagmatia: Essays on Neo-Latin Literature in Honour of Monique Mund-Dopchie and Gilbert Tournoy, ed. Dirk Sacré and Jan Papy (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009), 369–70; and Kivistö, Vices of Learning, 147–201.
87 Lotichius, Oratio, 60.
88 Lotichius, Oratio, 54.
89 Lotichius, Oratio, 63.
90 Lotichius, Oratio, 84.
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Isabella Walser-Bürgler
Dr Isabella Walser-Bürgler is lecturer at the Department of Classics and Neo-Latin Studies, University of Innsbruck, Austria, and principal investigator at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies, Innsbruck, Austria. Her research interests encompass early modern academic oratory, the Neo-Latin novel, and concepts of early modern European integration. She currently works on a monograph on the professorial inaugural oration at the early modern German university.