University

In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, universities enjoyed a nearly complete monopoly as educators of Europe's scholarly, civic, and ecclesiastical elites. Although no author or treatise articulated the idea that universities should train the intellectual and sometimes the political and ecclesiastical leaders of Europe, they did. In the sixteenth century European universities probably exerted the greatest influence on learning and society in their history. Professors at Italian universities made extraordinary, original, scholarly contributions in medicine, philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy. The original anatomical research of Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) while at the University of Padua from 1537 to 1543 and the mathematical and scientific research of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), who taught at the University of Pisa from 1589 to 1592 and the University of Padua from 1592 to 1610, were just the best known of many examples of innovative research with enduring consequences. Martin Luther (1483–1546) created a new theology while teaching at the University of Wittenberg from 1513 on. He and many other professors of theology led the Protestant Reformation through their teaching, writing, and advice to princes. The Reformation, in turn, changed Europe religiously, politically, and culturally.

As a result of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, many European universities became closely allied with religious groups in ways that they never had been in the past. The Society of Jesus in particular dominated some older universities or played major roles in newly founded ones from the middle of the sixteenth century onward. On the other side of the religious divide, some universities became closely identified with Protestant churches, such as the University of Wittenberg with the Lutheran Church and several universities with Calvinism, especially in the Netherlands. The University of Leiden (founded in 1575) was the most important among the latter.