On 23 July 1622, Archbishop Paris Lodron appointed the scholar Albert Keuslin first rector of the Benedictine university. Keuslin, a graduate of the Jesuit University of Dillingen, had established the "Akademisches Gymnasium", a secondary school, at Salzburg five years earlier. By resolution of Emperor Ferdinand II, issued on October 8, the Gymnasium was raised to a university. While the Thirty Years' War raged outside the Archbishopric of Salzburg, the university was built up and maintained by a federation of Benedictine abbeys from Salzburg, Switzerland, Bavaria and Austria. In its early years, courses taught were theology, divinity, philosophy, law, and medicine.