Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/92

 80 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE for the poetical beauty of the language should not dis- tract the mind from contemplation of the deep and edi- fying truths which it conveyed. The study of Greek and Latin should not be confined to the learning of words, but should be the means of strengthening and disciplining thought. As Wimpheling said, ' Let culti- vation be for the quickening of independent thought.' As in the Netherlands, Westphalia, and along the Rhine, so too in South Germany, education spread and flourished during the latter end of the fifteenth century. Nuremberg and Augsburg were here the intellectual centres. In the first of these towns there were at the beginning of the sixteenth century four Latin schools which, owing to the exertions of the learned patrician, Wilibald Pirkheimer, and the provost Johann Kress, had in many respects attained a first-rate standing by the year 1509. A school of poetry was also established in 1515 under the direction of Johann Cochliius, the professor of classics, who was born at Wendelstein in the year 1479. In conjunction with Pirkheimer and Kress, Coch- laus compiled several school-books, notably a Latin grammar, which went through several editions, and by its clearness and conciseness gained the approval of able scholars. He also compiled a compendium of the ' Mathematical Geography ' of Pomponius Mela, and a commentary on the ' Meteorology ' of Aristotle, which he made the foundation of his method of teaching natural philo- sophy. Outside the Mark of Brandenburg there was scarcely a single large town in Germany in which, at the end of the fifteenth century, in addition to the