Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/74

 62 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE at Herzogenbusch to twelve hundred ; and at Deventer, in the year 1500, actually to 2,200. The instruction in these schools being free, they were open to students of the smallest means. In many of the towns also, where they had not started actual schools, the Brothers were active in the cause of education by supplying teachers for the town schools, paying the school fees for the poorer scholars and supplying them with books and stationery and other school materials. In 1431 Pope Eugene sent express orders to the Archbishop of Cologne and to the Bishops of Miinster and Utrecht, that they should prevent any interference with the beneficial work of the Brothers. His suc- cessors, Pius II. and Sixtus IV., went even further in support and encouragement of the Brothers. Among German prelates, Mcolaus of Cusa was one of their most active patrons. Himself educated at Deventer, he had given the school there material support by a liberal endowment for the maintenance of twenty poor students, and he used all his efforts for the furtherance of their institutions generally. His most gifted protege, the Frieslander Eudolphus Agricola, was one of that chosen band of students whom the renowned Thomas a Kempis gathered around him in Zwolle, 1 and which further included the three Westphalians, Alexander Hegius, Eudolph vpn Langen, and Ludwig Dringenberg, all of them equally distin- guished for their learning, their piety, and the purity of their morals. They were the most zealous revivers of classic literature on German soil, the fathers of the older German Humanism. 1 Thomas a Kempis was, probably, not a teacher in that school. See Dillenburger, pp. 4 7.