Seneca, Horace, Catullus, Juvenal, Silius, Statius, Lucan, Suetonius,
Sallust, Quintilian, Varro, Pomponius Mela, the two Plinies, and the
_Germania_ of Tacitus." He possessed a creditable amount of knowledge of
General History and Church History. He had made a profound study of the
leading philosophers and scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages:
Thomas of Aquinas, Peter Lombard, Bernard of Clairvaux, Duns Scotus,
Occam, Gregory of Rimini, Pierre d'Ailly, Gerson, and Biel. Two of these
he knew almost by heart. He had studied the ancient Church Fathers:
Irenaeus, Cyprian, Eusebius, Athanasius, Hilary, Ambrose, Gregory of
Nanzianzen, Jerome, and such later theologians as Cassiodorus, Gregory
the Great, and Anselm of Canterbury; Tauler, Lefevre, Erasmus, and Pico
della Mirandola. "He was quite at home in the exegetical Middle Ages, in
the Canon Law, in Aristotle and Porphyry." "He was one of the first
German professors to learn Greek and Hebrew." Moreover, Luther
possessed, besides knowledge, those indispensable requisites in a good
professor: "the faculty of plain, clear, correct, and independent
thought, resourcefulness, acumen" (Boehmer, p. 179 f.). He had the
courage to tell the Church that it was a shame, that a heathen
philosopher, Aristotle, should formulate the doctrines which Christians
are to believe and their pastors are to teach. He threw this heathen,
who had for ages dominated Christian teaching, out of his lecture-room,
and took his students straight to the pure fountain of religious truth,
the Word of God. He publicly burned the Canon Law by which the Roman
Church had forged chains for the consciences of men, and which she
upholds to this day. His lecture-room became crowded with eager and
enthusiastic students, and the stripling university planted on the edge
of civilization in the sands along the Elbe became for a while the
religious and theological hub of the world. The students who gathered
about Luther knew that they had a real professor in him. The world of
his day came to this fledgling doctor with the weightiest questions, and