The first Protestant university was founded in Marburg in 1527, under the aegis of Philip the Magnanimous (1504-67), landgrave of Hesse. His motive was purely political as he had converted to Lutheranism in 1524 to assemble a league of Protestant leaders against the Habsburg empire. The university in Marburg served as encouragement for the founding of other Protestant universities in Germany and elsewhere. By the late 16th century, there were several Protestant universities in the Netherlands, and Trinity College had been established in Dublin. Protestantism itself was partly based on a skeptical attitude toward contemporary religious authority, and thus toward the inherent truth of the Catholic religion. Protestant universities taught that personal reading and interpretation of the Bible and related texts in their original languages, unmediated by priests or the pope, would reveal religious truth. By the mid-16th century, Protestant scholars were debating points of theology on the basis of differing philological conclusions about the texts at hand. In addition points of canon law were set aside or called into question. Students could see that metaphysical truth was questionable, and that insight introduced philosophical questions about the nature of truth itself. This critical and inquisitive attitude, already awakened in some of the humanists who were editing classical texts, may have contributed to the development of experimental science during the 17 th century.
World History
