From the Diet of Worms to the Augsburg Confession - James Aitken Wylie

liberty, coming after, enter at the breach which the
others had opened with their lives.
Setting out from Piacenza on the 23rd October,
the emperor went on to meet the Pope at Bologna.
He carried with him the three Protestant deputies as
his captives. Travelling by slow stages he gave
ample time to the Italians to mark the splendor of
his retinue, and the number and equipments of his
army. The city he was now approaching had
already enjoyed two centuries of eminence.
Bologna was the seat of the earliest of those
universities which arose in Europe when the light
of learning began again to visit its sky. The first
foundation of this school was in A.D. 425, by
Theodosius the younger; it rose to eminence under
Charlemagne, and attained its full splendor in the
fifteenth century, when the scholastic philosophy
began to give place to more rational studies, and
the youth of many lands flocked in thousands to
study within its walls. It is in respect of this seat of
learning that Bologna stamps upon its coin
Bononia docet, to which is added, in its coat of
arms, libertas. Bologna was the second city in the
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