Ex cathedra

When Frederick the Elector of Saxony protected Luther from church and imperial authorities, it was not as a personal friend but to protect the rights of the university faculty to exercise censorship in religious matters. The Reformation thus planted the seeds for the exaltation of the university Professor in German culture, an exaltation in the German name given to the professorial chair: the Katheder . As Rosenstock-Huessy says, “the universities became the heirs of the bishops’ chair, the cathedra,” and as a result the professorial chairs became “a churchlike institution, like the Commons in England.”