0"T' LAERT> "! - USP

THE UNIVERSITIES IN THE l6TH CENTURY. 315
foreground. The Protestant academies fought no less
zealously for the new faith than did the Catholic universities,
under the guidance of Jesuits, defend the authority
of the Pope. No one who did not adhere to the Lutheran
belief was tolerated at the academy of Helmstadt. The
Duke of Brunswick, in 1584, declared to the General
Consistory that it was better that such people should " go
straightway to the devil than that they should sully and
contaminate his churches and schools."* However, it was
already a great advance in the direction of tolerance that
he only wished those of another faith, in the world to come,
and did not use force to help them on the road thither.
Unfortunately this occurred only too often even under the
rule of Protestantism, as, not to mention the cruel and
bloody persecutions of which England and the countries
subject to her were the scene, the example of the unfortunate
MICHAEL SERVET testifies, who, on the prosecution
of CALVIN, came to the stake at Geneva owing to his failure
to comprehend the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity of the
Godhead.t
The effect of the split in the Church upon the universities,
which attached themselves to the movements of
religious reform, manifested itself first by the act of shaking
off the yoke of Rome and by a removal of direct papal
interference. But ecclesiastical influence was not thus
abolished ; Protestant theologians merely stepped into the
place of their Catholic predecessors, making their rule
oppressively felt in many countries—for example, in
England—and extending their control in an unjustifiable
manner over all possible paths of intellectual life. A freer
spirit animated the Protestant academies of Germany.
The priesthood of the new Church here won less power
and developed gradually into an organ of the State Govern-
* PAULSEN op. cit. S. 178 following E. L. T. HENKE: Georg Calixtus
und seine Zeit, Halle 1853.
t W. E. H. LECKY: History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of
Rationalism in Europe.