Hieronymus Münzer

Hieronymus Münzer or Monetarius (1437/47 – 27 August 1508) was a

As a participant in the trading company of his brother Ludwig (died 1518) he was a rich man, using his money to establish amongst other things a comprehensive library. In 1480 he acquired Nuremberg citizenship and 3 July married Dorothea Kieffhaber (died 1505). Their daughter Dorothea married Dr. Hieronymus Holzschuher, whose son of the same name was painted by Albrecht Dürer. They also had at least two sons. In 1483 Münzer fled from the plague to Italy, bought numerous books in Rome, Naples and Milan, and returned home the following year. In 1484 he also travelled to the Netherlands. In 1494/95 he undertook a longer journey around Western Europe. Münzer died on 27 August 1508 in Nuremberg, and was buried there in the church of St. Sebald. He left behind an enormous fortune, much of which came from his partnership in the trading business of his brother Ludwig (owner of Gwiggen Castle in 1507).

Work

Münzer was a friend of Hartmann Schedel (1440–1514) and contributed geographical sections to the latter's Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493, including the first printed map of Germany, which appeared in two-sided form. In 1493, his close contacts with the Nuremberg merchant Martin Behaim led Münzer to suggest to the King of Portugal on behalf of Emperor Maximilian a journey across the Atlantic in search of the route to India, recommending Behaim for the task.

In 1494, again escaping the plague, he undertook a long journey with three younger companions from Nuremberg and Augsburg. They travelled from Nuremberg, largely on horseback, possibly for some 7,000 miles in all through Germany and Switzerland, down the Rhône to Provence, Languedoc and Roussillon, and across the Pyrenees. They travelled through eastern and southern Spain into Portugal, back into Spain, and then into France again, then northwards through France and Belgium to Cologne, and down the Rhine and Main back to Nuremberg. Münzer's report of this trip is written in Latin, with the title Itinerarium siue peregrinatio excellentissimi viri artium ac vtriusque medicine doctoris Hieronimi Monetarii de Feltkirchen ciuis Nurembergensis. The report exists today only as a copy and is preserved in a

Münzer commented on numbers of great churches and monasteries, their relics, and often their clergy. The places about which he tells us much include

Münzer is less informative about the German lands than about the Iberian and French. He passed through Aachen, where emperors had been crowned ever since Charlemagne’s son. Cologne was ruled by its archbishop, an elector of the Empire. The archbishop of Mainz was also an elector. Münzer did not mention the war in 1462 between the citizens and the archbishop, who repressed them savagely. He visited Worms during a Reichstag in 1495, one of the two during the reign of Emperor Maximilian, who had previously ruled the Low Countries as his young son’s guardian. On the Main he visited Frankfurt, scene of important fairs which no German merchant could afford to miss. Thence to Würzburg, where he met the aged bishop Rudolf, who had rescued the diocese from insolvency, and then home to Nuremberg, where he found his family well. He died in Nuremberg

Selected works

• Itinerarium siue peregrinatio excellentissimi viri artium ac vtriusque medicine doctoris Hieronimi Monetarii de Feltkirchen ciuis Nurembergensis (journey 1494/95; date of publication unclear). The Latin text of all Hieronymous Münzer’s Itinerarium except the Iberian section was published by Ernst Philip Goldschmidt in four sections in Humanisme et Renaissance, Vol. VI (1939) as ‘Le voyage de Hieronymus Monetarius à travers la France’. The Latin text of the Iberian section of the Itinerarium was published by Ludwig Pfandl in Revue Hispanique (1920) 48 as ‘Itinerarium Hispanicum Hieronymi Monetarii’.
• De inventione Africae maritimae et occidentalis videlicet Geneae per Infantem Heinricum Portugalliae, ed. v. Friedrich Kunstmann, in: Abhandlungen der historischen Classe der königlich bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Bd. 7, München 1855, S. 291–362 (Einleitung 291–347). The Latin text with Portuguese translation was also published by Basilio de Vasconcelos in 1932 in O Instituto.

References