Bildungswege — Lebenswege: Universitätsbesucher aus dem Bistum Konstanz im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (review)

This monograph deserves the highest praise, and also more than a short review can properly accord to it. The text thereof is divided into four sections. In the first and introductory section Beat Immenhauser discusses previous relevant studies and the methodology that he himself has utilized. His own study is largely based on data extracted from university registers (Universitätsmatrikeln) that recorded student enrollments and other related information for the universities — both in and beyond the German language area of Europe — at which students hailing from the Constance diocese enrolled during the period between the years 1430 and 1550. He also outlines the political, legal, demographic, economic, and educational makeup of the Constance diocese — the largest Roman Catholic diocese in the German-language area of Europe beginning in 1469 — during the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries.

The second section presents and examines in detail enrollment patterns of these students. The number of these enrollments grew from the year 1430 onward, reaching its peak during the years between 1490 and 1520 but declining sharply — in large part due to the Protestant Reformation — from 1520 onwards. This section also discusses additional factors pertaining to these enrollments, including the number of enrollments from various local areas in the diocese, the universities that they attended, the percentages of students who attended more that one university, the socioeconomic groups to which these students belonged — including nobles, urban patricians, members of the clergy (and members of individual monastic orders), students having lesser socioeconomic status, and paupers — and the availability of financial and other assistance for some of these students.

Also examined are the extent to which students studied at the same universities as their own relatives and which subject matters (i.e., arts, theology, medicine, and jurisprudence) were frequently studied. Immenhauser notes that the rising numbers of students from the Constance diocese coincided with the establishment of two universities, at Freiburg/Breisgau (1460) and Tübingen (1477), in the Constance diocese and one university at Basel (1460) directly adjacent thereto. And it is noted that university study became a tradition in many families, and that this was normally linked to professional goals.

Section 3 reconstructs, insofar as extant evidence permits, the subsequent career paths of students from the Constance diocese. Immenhauser has done an excellent job of assembling and utilizing this evidence. He divides these career positions into the general categories of ecclesiastical and secular.

Ecclesiastical positions discussed are those of bishops, diocese administrators, administrators of “foundations” (Stifte) and monasteries, preachers, pastoral priests, other parish-level clerics, and monks. In discussing secular positions, Immenhauser distinguishes between municipal positions and provincial (i.e., diocesan) positions: the former include aldermen, judges, scribes, notaries, school teachers, attorneys, and physicians; the latter include diocese administrators (including those assigned to local areas), counselors, judges, other jurists, and faculty members at the Universities of Tübingen and Freiburg/Breisgau. In discussing each of these groups, Immenhauser presents the frequency with which group members attended universities, earned academic degrees (and if so, which degrees they earned), and how these factors correlate with their financial status and professional advancement.

Three general points can be mentioned here. First, the subject matter of this monograph — as evident in the array of resources utilized and discussed by its author — suggests that one should be cautious if one separates social history and intellectual history from each another, and that our historical knowledge of intellectual and social realms can be enhanced when links and commonalities between the two are not neglected. Second, extant statistical data can have significant value for the study of Renaissance history and culture. And third, this monograph is a valuable case study based on the use of university enrollment books.

These enrollment books, which also frequently include information concerning academic degrees awarded to students and/or...