Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/400

 388 The Library. (Plumptre). When High-German became the language of the educated people of the North, Plumbom became Pflaumenbaum. Recently the family applied for the Royal licence to change back again from Pflaumenbaum to Bley. Sometimes the simple entry of a name on the Register, some- times an additional note by a later hand, give us useful historical information or settle disputed points. Thus Ulrich von Hutton made a declaration at Leipzig that he had never taken the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Frankfurt. Having been created a poeta laureatus by the Emperor, he felt ashamed of the pedantic distinction. The matriculation book of Frankfurt convicts the erratic knight of a deliberate falsehood. In the earlier times the universities bore a cosmopolitan character, all being dependent on the Pope and the Church of Rome : after the Reformation they gradually became national institutions. A curious instance of the influence of a foreigner on the fate and fortunes of the natives is recorded at Heidelberg. An Englishman, George Withers, proceeded for his degree in Divinity on June 21, 1574; amongst his theses were some of a controversial character. At the disputation the opposing parties became excited, the struggle was continued in the lecture-rooms and in the pulpit. The result was that a number of clergymen and professors were deprived of their offices, some kept for many years in prison, and one, Sylvanus, a former professor, was publicly beheaded in the market-place at Heidelberg, on Decem- ber 23, 1573. Another one, Neuser, fled first to Hungary and then to Constantinople, where he is said to have become a Mahometan. Neuser's name has been saved from oblivion and obloquy by Lessing in one of his acute and lucid essays. No fact is more certain than that Wieland was a student at Tubingen in the years 1750-1752. Nevertheless, his name does not appear on the Register of the University. The fact is, he was simply entered as a student at the Collegium Hoch- mannianum, and never took the trouble of matriculating in the university. The international influence of the universities is shown by the number of students of a country resorting to foreign universi- ties. Thus, the large number of Swiss students at Strassburg and Freiburg in the sixteenth century show the influence of these universities on the Swiss reformation. Again, Swiss classical studies were greatly influenced, in the earlier part of the present century, by the number of Swiss students resorting to Halle and