The appointments were as a rule made only for a certain
time, sometimes for only half a year, so that the teachers were forced
to lead a wandering life, like actors. Appointments for life were,
however, not unknown. Sometimes the promise was exacted not to teach
elsewhere what had already been taught at one place. There were also
voluntary, unpaid professors.
Of the chairs which have been mentioned, that of rhetoric was
especially sought by the humanist; yet it depended only on his
familiarity with the matter of ancient learning whether or no be could
aspire to those of law, medicine, philosophy, or astronomy. The inward
conditions of the science of the day were as variable as the outward
conditions of the teacher. Certain jurists and physicians received by
far the largest salaries of all, the former chiefly as consulting
lawyers for the suits and claims of the State which employed them. In
Padua a lawyer of the fifteenth century received a salary of 1,000
ducats, and it was proposed to appoint a celebrated physician with a
yearly payment of 2,000 ducats, and the right of private practice, the
same man having previously received 700 gold florins at Pisa. When the
jurist Bartolommeo Socini, professor at Pisa, accepted a Venetian
appointment at Padua, and was on the point of starting on his journey,
he was arrested by the Florentine government and only released on
payment of bail to the amount of 18,000 gold florins.
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