Ulrich von Hutten
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Ulrich von Hutten | |
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Reformation, Renaissance humanism, German Renaissance | |
Notable works | Epistolae obscurorum virorum De Morbo Gallico Ars versificandi Nemo |
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Ulrich von Hutten (21 April 1488 – 29 August 1523) was a German knight, scholar, poet and
By 1519, he was an outspoken
He was a leader of the Imperial Knights of the Holy Roman Empire along with Franz von Sickingen. Both were the leaders in the Knights' Revolt.
Biography
His life may be divided into four parts: his youth and cloister life (1488–1504); his wanderings in pursuit of knowledge (1504–1515); his strife with Ulrich of Württemberg (1515–1519); and his connection with the Reformation (1510–1523).[1]
Youth and cloister life
Hutten was born in
Pursuit of knowledge
In Cologne, Hutten met
In 1509, he was studying theology at the University of Greifswald, where he was at first received kindly. In 1510 he spent time further studying theology at Wittenberg University.[2]
However his burgher patrons could not tolerate the poet's airs and vanity and ill-timed assertions of his higher rank. Wherefore Hutten left Greifswald, and as he went was robbed of clothes and books, his only baggage, by the servants of his late friends. In the dead of winter, half starved, frozen, penniless, he reached Rostock.
In Rostock, again the humanists received him gladly, and under their protection he wrote against his Greifswald patrons, thus beginning the long list of his satires and fierce attacks on personal or public foes. Rostock could not hold him long, and he wandered on to Wittenberg, where in 1511 he published his Ars Versificatoria, a work on versification. His next stop was Leipzig, and thence to Vienna, where he hoped to win the emperor Maximilian's favour by an elaborate national poem on the war with Venice. But neither Maximilian nor the University of Vienna would lift a hand for him.
So Hutten went on to Italy, and settled at Pavia to study law. In 1512, his studies were interrupted by war: in the siege of Pavia by papal troops and Swiss, he was plundered by both sides, and escaped, sick and penniless, to Bologna. On his recovery, he served for a short time as a private soldier in the emperor's army, but by 1514 was back in Germany. Thanks to his poetic gifts and the friendship of Eitelwolf von Stein (d. 1515), he won the favour of the elector of Mainz, Archbishop Albert of Brandenburg. Here high dreams of a learned career rose on him: Mainz should be made the metropolis of a grand humanist movement, the centre of good style and literary form.
Strife with Ulrich of Württemberg
But the murder in 1515 of his relative Hans von Hutten by
Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum was written in support of Hutten's mentor, the prominent theologian
Hutten went again to Italy to take the degree of doctor of laws, and returned to Germany in 1517. There the emperor took him under his protection and bestowed on him the honors of a poet's laureate crown and knighthood. However, he also spared Ulrich, duke of Württemberg. While in Italy, Hutten conceived a fierce hatred for the papacy, which he bitterly attacked in his preface to an edition of Laurentius Valla's De Donatione Constantini, published in 1517. He thus helped prepare the way for Martin Luther.
In 1518, Hutten accompanied his patron, Archbishop Albert, on several official journeys to Paris and to the Diet of Augsburg, where Luther had his famous conference with Thomas Cajetan. Subsequently, Hutten established a small printing press, and published pamphlets written in the German language attacking the Pope and the Roman clergy.
Participation in the Reformation
In what is known as the
Following his defeat, Hutten tried to convince
Hutten died in seclusion on the island of Ufenau on Lake Zurich.
Health issues
For the final 15 years of his life, Hutten suffered from the "
In the last hundred years, two skeletons have been dug up: a male without signs of syphilis and a female with signs of syphilis. This has led to recent speculation in the American Journal of Medicine that von Hutten may have been a cross-dressing woman.[6]
Works
Hutten was more open in the expression of his opinions than any other man, probably, of his age. He did much to prepare the way for the Reformation and to promote it. He was a master of the
His chief works were his Ars versificandi (The Art of Prosody, 1511); the Nemo (1518); a work on the Morbus Gallicus (1519); the volume of Steckelberg complaints against Duke Ulrich (including his four Ciceronian Orations, his Letters and the Phalarismus) also in 1519; the Vadismus (1520); and the controversy with Erasmus at the end of his life. Besides these were many poems in Latin and German.
Letters of Obscure Men
His most noteworthy contribution to literature was his portion of the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum (Letters of Obscure Men). At first the cloister world, not discerning its irony, welcomed the work as a defence of their position against Johann Reuchlin; though their eyes were soon opened by the favor with which the learned world received it. The Epistolæ were eagerly bought up; the first part (41 letters) appeared at the end of 1515; early in 1516 there was a second edition; later in 1516 a third, with an appendix of seven letters; in 1517 appeared the second part (62 letters), to which a fresh appendix of eight letters was subjoined soon after.[1]
How far Hutten was the parent of this celebrated work was long a matter of dispute. Hutten, in a letter addressed to
Life as a vassal knight
Hutten writes a graphic description of the harshness of life as a vassal knight (a Lehnsmann) in medieval Europe in a letter to Willibald Pirckheimer(1470–1530) that dispels the glamour with which the life of the nobility is sometimes viewed.
Family
In addition to Hans von Hutten, Ulrich von Hutten was also related to the German adventurer Philipp von Hutten.[citation needed]
Legacy
- As a student at the 1848 revolution broke out in Germany.[9]
- During
Notes
- ^ a b c Kitchin 1911, pp. 14–15.
- ^ Von Hutten plaque, Wittenberg
- ^ "Portraits of Luther and Erasmus". Notes and Queries. 15. 9 February 1850. Retrieved 13 August 2021.
- ^ a b von Hutten, Ulrich (1533). De Morbo Gallico [On The French Disease]. London: Thomas Berthelet.
- S2CID 3758928.
- PMID 37612028.
- ^ Brecht, W. (1904). Die Verfasser der Epistolae obscurorum virorum. Strassburg.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ a b Holborn 1965, p. 61
- ^ Carl Schurz, Reminiscences, Volume I, Chapters IV and V, pp. 110–12.
- ISBN 3764810971.
- ISBN 9780811734165.
References
- Holborn, Hajo (1965) [1937]. "Polemic Against Scholasticism". Ulrich von Hutten and the German Reformation. Translated by Roland H. Bainton. New York: Harper Torchbooks. p. 61.
Attribution
- public domain: Kitchin, George William (1911). "Hutten, Ulrich von". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 14 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 14–15. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
Further reading
- Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921. .
- Encyclopedia Americana. 1920. .
- Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. .
- "Hutten, Ulrich von". Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906.
- New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
.
- Die Luft der Freiheit weht - History of Stanford University's motto, mentioning its origins in a speech about Hutten.
- Origins of Syphilis NY TimesApril 29, 2008
- Fife, Robert Herndon. "Ulrich von Hutten as a Literary Problem." The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 23, no. 1 (1948): 18-29.