A Shared Project of Territory, Family, and Church
The establishment of Tübingen University in 1477 was an educational and territorial-development project promoted by Count Eberhard V of Württemberg. Württemberg was then divided into two domains, and Eberhard ruled the Urach branch. Köpf’s research places the university at the intersection of church reform, educational provision, and territorial competition. It was expected to train clergy and officials while also strengthening its founder’s position within Württemberg.
This was not a project completed by one person’s donation of a sum of money. Eberhard’s mother, Mechthild, possessed relevant rights over ecclesiastical institutions in Sindelfingen, making the reallocation of funding possible. Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, the brother of Eberhard’s wife Barbara Gonzaga, supported negotiations in Rome. The official 2022 historical report on the university’s name traces these connections through documentary evidence, while noting that Mechthild’s precise contribution still requires further research.
From Papal Authorization to Registration and Privileges
On November 13, 1476, Pope Sixtus IV issued a bull authorizing a university in Tübingen. Heinrich Fabri, abbot of Blaubeuren, was charged with implementing it and promulgated the relevant documents in Urach on March 11, 1477. Roth’s collection of original documents, published in 1877, preserves the bull, implementation documents, and information about witnesses, allowing authorization and execution to be checked separately.
On July 3, the count issued a further proclamation in Latin, inviting scholars and young students to come and setting October 1 as the opening date. The matriculation register records that the first rector, Johannes Vergenhans, had already begun registering members on September 15. The charter of privileges of October 9 subsequently defined the legal standing of the university and its members. The year 1477 therefore encompassed the implementation of authorization, recruitment, registration, and the determination of rights. October 9 specifically identifies a foundation and privileges document; not every activity should be assigned to that one day.
Turning Ecclesiastical Income into Teaching Funds
The funding plan rested on existing ecclesiastical benefices. After Mechthild relinquished the relevant rights of presentation, eight canonries and associated revenues of the chapter of St. Martin in Sindelfingen were transferred to St. George’s Church in Tübingen. The original plan was for six to support teaching in theology and canon law, while the income of the other two would be divided into four shares for teachers in the arts. Other church revenues would support civil law and medicine.
The system quickly encountered obstacles: canons’ possession of income did not mean that they wished or were able to become professors, and the university could not arbitrarily deprive them of their positions. The theology chairs could not be properly filled during the first six months. Köpf describes how, in 1482, Eberhard traveled to Rome and obtained new permission gradually to pool the income of vacant benefices with other revenues into a common fund from which teachers’ salaries could be paid. The university’s financial organization was thus revised through the experience of operating it.
Four Faculties and Dispersed Classrooms
Both the papal authorization and the recruitment proclamation used a framework of four faculties: theology, law, medicine, and arts. The July proclamation listed teaching arrangements for three doctors of theology, three of canon law, two of civil law, two of medicine, and four masters of arts, and advertised that poverty would not deprive anyone of the opportunity to attend lectures. This was a program of courses and staffing intended to attract people from elsewhere, not proof that all those teachers had arrived by opening day.
Teaching space was also assembled gradually. St. George’s Church hosted formal disputations, degree conferrals, and inaugural ceremonies, and Köpf records that the Bursa residential and teaching building had been completed by 1480. A set of documents dated September 9, 1490, further shows that the university secured permanent use of a theology lecture room in the Augustinian buildings for forty Rhenish guilders. A proposed law lecture room was abandoned because the space was unsuitable. Negotiations over classroom locations show how deeply the early campus was embedded in the city’s ecclesiastical buildings.
The Specific Meaning of Freedom and Exclusion
The charter of privileges of October 9, 1477, did more than praise learning. It protected teachers and students arriving, residing, and departing; specified judicial jurisdiction and tax treatment for everyday goods and books; and required fair assessments of the rents of houses occupied by students. Personal safety, living costs, and judicial procedures were all conditions necessary for the teaching community to function.
The same document, however, required that Jews and so-called “public moneylenders” not be permitted to reside in Tübingen, and restricted loans or pledges involving teachers’ and students’ books without the rector’s permission. The 2022 expert report interprets these clauses in the context of contemporary systems of protected residence, noting that they limited future settlement; the wording alone cannot establish that a general expulsion occurred that day. University members’ privileges coexisted with the exclusion of others, showing that “freedom” here meant the legal treatment of a particular status group.
Commemorating the Founder and Later University Names
The “Karl” in the university’s modern name does not belong to its founding circumstances in 1477. The 2022 expert report recounts that on December 17, 1769, an order from Duke Karl Eugen reached the university, requiring it to use the name Eberhardina Carolina and place his name alongside Eberhard’s. After the duke’s death in 1793, this double name fell out of use for a time before being restored in 1845.
Changes in the name show that the history of foundation and the commemoration of a founder are different matters. The university of 1477 belonged to the pre-Reformation network of ecclesiastical universities. Its later Protestant character, dynastic identity, and commemorative practices developed in different institutional settings. Examining recruitment documents, financial adjustments, teaching spaces, and subsequent naming separately reveals how the university was established and reinterpreted, without rewriting its later identity as the complete picture at its foundation.