236 History of Universities
jects on the universities. For the first time in modern history
learning became fashionable with the upper classes, who had
formerly despised it as fit only for clerks and lawyers. Louis
XI of France forbade his son Charles VIII to study at the
University, lest it make a clerk of him and not a soldier-
prince ; but Francis I founded a college, and his contemporary
Henry VIII was no mean scholar himself. In England, espe-
cially, young gentlemen flocked into the universities, shoul-
dering poor boys destined for the Church, and the young
gentlemen have never ceased coming.
Finally, we must consider the effect of the Protestant Re-
formation on the universities. Although Protestantism at-
tracted to itself a wide popular support, it was originally an
intellectual movement, emanating from university men such
as Professor Martin Luther of Wittenberg and his colleague
Melancthon. Sundry princes took it up simply because they
wished to free themselves from the restraining hand of
Rome. The first effect of the Reformation on universities
like Wittenberg and Cambridge that embraced it, was a
sharp decline in enrollment. At Wittenberg the number of
students fell from 330 to 85 the year after Martin Luther
posted his ninety-five theses; new scholarships had to be
founded out of confiscated monastic properties to bring the
students back; and some of the leading German universities,
such as Erfurt, never wholly recovered. More permanent
was the political effect of the breach with Rome. The uni-
versities of North Germany and England, which had leaned
on Rome for support against state interference, now lost
their autonomy. The Reformation delivered them, bound
hand and foot, to the state; and the Catholic universities
were likewise affected, since Catholic monarchs, on the pre-
tense of protecting universities from heresy, either laid heavy
hands on them, or (as in the case of Ingolstadt) gave them