Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/110

 98 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE Ehenish university, and that first-rate men taught there. Amongst the learned professors, the provost Henry Mangold, who had several times filled the office of rector of the university, was one of the most zealous promoters of classical studies. Even the two shining lights of the theological faculty, Theodore von Siistern and Arnold von Tungern, little as their own style had been formed on the classic models, maintained the most friendly relations with many of the young ' poets,' as the Humanists were called. In 1512, Herman von dem Busche prefaced a work of Tungern's by commendatory verses. Adam Potken cites, as promoters of classical studies, two learned men of the day not belonging to the university, Adam Mayer, abbot of St. Martin (1499), celebrated for his writings on theology and canon law, as well as for his zeal in monastic reform, and Werner Eolewinck, prior to the Carthusians of Chartreuse, one of the most venerable personages at the end of the fifteenth century. Eolewinck's writings are mostly of a theological, mystic, ascetic, or devotional character. They consist chiefly of explanations of the Holy Scriptures, which from his earliest youth he had studied indefatigably. Amongst his various commen- taries on the Epistles of St. Paul, there is one of six folio volumes. In his seventy-sixth year, in 1502, a few months before he was carried off by the plague while in the exercise of his priestly calling, he gave a course of public lectures on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Eomans, and charmed his numerous audience, among whom were many university professors. But Eolewinck did not confine his studies to sacred sub- jects: he wrote treatises on the best form of govern- ment, on the origin of the nobilitv, and on the treatment