When Luther first came from Eisenach to Erfurt, there was nothing yet about him that attracted the attention of others so far as to call forth any contemporary account of him. Enough, however, is known of the most eminent teachers there, at whose feet he sat, and also of the general kind of intellectual food which they administered. He gained entrance into a circle of older and younger men than himself, teachers and fellow-students, who in later years, either as friends or opponents, were able to bear witness, favourably or the reverse, as to his life and work at Erfurt.
The leading professor of philosophy at Erfurt was then Jodocus Trutvetter, who, three years after Luther's arrival, became also doctor of theology and lecturer of the theological faculty. Next to him, in this department, ranked Bartholomew Arnoldi of Usingen. It was to these two men above others, and particularly to the former, that Luther looked for his instruction.
The philosophy which was then in vogue at Erfurt, and which found its most vigorous champion in Trutvetter, was that of the Scholasticism of later days. It is common to associate with the idea of Scholasticism, or the theological and philosophical School-science of the middle ages, a system of thought and instruction, embracing, indeed, the highest questions of knowledge and existence, but at the same time not venturing to strike into any independent paths, or to deviate an inch from tradition, but submitting rather, in everything connected, or supposed to be connected, with religious belief, to the dogmas and decrees of the Church and the authority of the early Fathers, and wasting the understanding and intellect in dry formalism or subtle but barren controversies. This conception fails to appreciate the vast labour of thought bestowed by leading minds on the attempt to unravel the mass of ecclesiastical teaching which had twined round the innermost lives of themselves and their fellow-Christians, and at the same time to follow those general questions under the guidance of the old philosophers, especially Aristotle, of whom they knew but little. But it is applicable, at any rate, to the Scholasticism of later days. The confidence with which its older exponents had thought to explain and establish orthodoxy by means of their favourite science, was gone; all the more, therefore, should that science keep silence in face of the commands of the Church. Men, moreover, had grown tired of the old questions of philosophy about the reality and real existence of Universals. It had been formerly a question of dispute whether our general ideas had a real existence, or whether they were nothing more than words or names, mere abstractions, comprehending the individual, which alone was supposed to possess Reality. At that time the latter doctrine, that of Nominalism, as it was called, prevailed. At length, these new or 'modern' philosophers abandoned the question of Realism, and the relation of thought to Reality, in favour of a system of pure logic or dialectics, dealing with the mere forms and expressions of thought, the formal analysis of ideas and words, the mutual relation of propositions and conclusions--in short, all that constitutes what we call formal logic, in its widest acceptation. At this point, the far-famed scholastic intellect, with its subtleties, its fine distinctions, its nice questions, its sophistical conclusions, reached its zenith.