Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/147

 UNIVERSITIES AND OTHER CENTRES OF LEARNING 135 regarding the foundation, says, ' The students who were sent from Tubingen to the Italian universities know as much as others who are leaving college there.' Count Eberhard's tutor, Johannes Vergenhanns, deserved equal credit with Eeuchlin for the management of this uni- versity. Its first period of renown, before the outbreak of the Church schism, was due to the learned theolo- gians, Paul Scriptoris, Conrad Summenhart, and Gabriel Biel. The first mentioned, prior of the Brothers-Minor in Tubingen, devoted his energies in conjunction with Summenhart to the furthering of the study of Greek and Hebrew, and gave private instruction in mathematics amongst his friends. At his lectures on Euclid and the Ptolemaic geography, in 1497, his audiences in- cluded nearly all the professors of the university. His pupil, Johannes Stoffler, pastor of Justingen, made in his own private study celestial globes and tower clocks, and gained wide renown as a mathematician and astro- nomer. He took an active share in the improvement of the calendar, and was one of the first writers on geo- graphical map-making. Summenhart (1502) maintained that a thorough knowledge of the dead languages was necessary to the true interpretation of the Scriptures. His work on ' Treaties and Conventions,' and that on 1 Tithes,' were valuable contributions to the science of political economy. Gabriel Biel died in 1495. He belonged to the school of Nominalists, and he is one of the few writers of this party who succeeded in constructing a system of ecclesiastical theology which has never been attacked by Catholic theologians. Enemies of the scholastics of every shade and