Emperor Maximilian I died on January 12, 1519. He was regarded as a significant supporter of humanism and employed famous intellectuals at his court that spread the ideology, such as Johannes Cuspinianus and Georg Tannstetter. For the leading humanistic disciplines of poetics and rhetoric, he appointed the parade humanist Konrad Celtis to Vienna.
In order to ensure the establishment of humanist subjects at the university despite university reservations, Maximilian I founded the Vienna Poetenkolleg (Collegium poetarum et mathematicorum) in 1501 and appointed Celtis as its head. The graduates of this college were crowned with the poet’s laurel, thus conferring on them the highest humanist dignity. The humanistic subjects only became a part of the Facultiy of Arts in the course of the university reforms implemented by Ferdinand I in 1537.
