Winners and Losers from the Protestant Reformation: An Analysis of the Network of European Universities

Using a new database of European academics, we build a network of universities that is based on professors’ mobility. We describe how the network was altered following the Protestant Reformation. We focus on fragmentation and on universities’ centrality. Dyadic regressions confirm that geography and vernacular languages were important for mobility, but did not substitute for religion. We compare simulated networks with and without religious identity. Most universities lose centrality in the simulated religious network compared to the non-religious one. As publications per university are correlated with centrality, the loss of connectedness of many universities after the Reformation contributed to their scientific decline.