Das höhere Bildungswesen der Schweiz in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit: Institutionen und Formen der Peregrinatio academica

Abstract

This study presents an overview of the institutions and forms of higher education in Switzerland. In addition to the University of Basel, founded in 1460, the author deals with Protestant Hohen Schulen (academies) (established in Zurich in 1525, in Bern in 1528, in Lausanne in 1537, and in Geneva in 1559) and Jesuit colleges which were founded between the last third of the sixteenth century and the first third of the seventeenth century. Apart from the Basel university, which was transformed into a Protestant university after the Reformation, Swiss Protestants had no possibility of studying law or medicine or even obtaining an academic degree in their own country. The Protestant academies were essentially training centres for the next generation of pastors and the same applied to the Jesuit colleges, which likewise granted no university privileges. Many students therefore had to seek academic training in the neighbouring countries. Both the University of Basel and the Protestant academies (though less so the Jesuit colleges) nevertheless attracted high numbers of foreign students, especially religious refugees who immigrated to Switzerland in several waves from the second half of the sixteenth century onwards, initially from Italy and England, but later also from France, Savoy-Piedmont, and Hungary. As a result, all Protestant educational institutions functioned as ‘exile colleges’ until the early eighteenth century. This specific situation of institutions of higher learning remained largely in place until the end of the nineteenth century – largely in consequence of the peculiarities of Switzerland’s strong federal constitution.