The University of Vienna was founded by Duke Rudolph IV of Austria in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. As at other European universities, the primary language of scholarship was Latin. This proclamation in Latin is by Petrus Muchitsch, a classical philologist and theologian who twice served as rector of the university, in 1577–78 and again in 1578. In this greeting, Petrus invites the students of the university to resume their studies following the end of the 1578 epidemic of plague in Vienna. Printed in the form of a broadside, the document includes one of the oldest surviving lecture schedules of the university, listing courses in the Faculty of Theology, the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Law, and the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Philosophy, and Languages, and indicating which courses were for baccalaureate students and masters students separately, and which were joint lectures. Broadsides; Courses and lectures; Plague; Proclamations; Universität Wien; Universities and colleges