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Ulrich von Hutten | |
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 Ulrich von Hutten,c. 1522 | |
| Born | (1488-04-21)21 April 1488 Steckelberg Castle, nearSchlüchtern,Hesse |
| Died | 29 August 1523(1523-08-29) (aged 35) Ufenau onLake Zurich |
| Occupation | Monk, knight, writer |
| Education | Theology |
| Alma mater | University of Greifswald |
| Period | Reformation |
| Literary movement | Reformation,Renaissance humanism,German Renaissance |
| Notable works | Epistolae obscurorum virorum De Morbo Gallico Ars versificandi Nemo |
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Ulrich von Hutten[1] (21 April 1488 – 29 August 1523) was a German knight, scholar, poet andsatirist, who later became a follower ofMartin Luther and aProtestant reformer.
By 1519, he was an outspokencritic of theRoman Catholic Church. Hutten was a bridge between theRenaissance humanists and theLutheranReformation. He was a leader of theknights of theHoly Roman Empire along withFranz von Sickingen. Both were the leaders in theKnights' War.
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 withUlrich of Württemberg (1515–1519); and his connection with the Reformation[2] (1510–1523).[3]
Hutten was born inSteckelberg Castle, now inSchlüchtern,Hesse. He was the eldest son of a poor but not undistinguished knightly family. As he was small of stature and sickly his father destined him for themonastic life, and, when he was ten years old, his father placed him at the nearbyPrincely Abbey of Fulda as anoblate to theBenedictinemonks. Fulda Abbey was home to theSt Rabanus Maurus School, a highly regarded institution throughout Germany, and Hutten received an excellent education. However, he disliked the restrictive nature of the monastic life, and in 1505 fled toCologne. He thus obtained his freedom, but incurred the undying anger of his father.
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In Cologne, Hutten metHoogstraten,Johannes Rhagius (also known as Johannes Aesticampianus), and other scholars and poets. In 1506, he went toErfurt, but soon after rejoined Rhagius atFrankfurt an der Oder where a new university was opening. There he took his master's degree and published his first poem. In 1507, he followed Rhagius toLeipzig. The1911 Encyclopædia Britannica reported that in 1508 he was a shipwrecked beggar on thePomeranian coast, while theNew International Encyclopedia described him as stricken down with the pestilence and recovering.
In 1509, he was studyingtheology at theUniversity of Greifswald, where he was at first received kindly. In 1510 he spent time further studying theology atUniversity of Wittenberg.[4]
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 reachedRostock.
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 hisArs Versificatoria, a work onversification. His next stop was Leipzig, and thence to Vienna, where he hoped to win the emperorMaximilian's favour by an elaborate national poem on the war withVenice. But neither Maximilian nor theUniversity of Vienna would lift a hand for him.
So Hutten went on to Italy, and settled atPavia 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, toBologna. 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 theelector of Mainz, ArchbishopAlbert 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.
But the murder in 1515 of his relative Hans von Hutten byUlrich, duke of Württemberg changed the whole course of Hutten's life; satire, chief refuge of the weak, became his weapon. With one hand he took his part in the famousEpistolæ Obscurorum Virorum (The Letters of Obscure Men), and with the other launched scathing letters, eloquent Ciceronian orations, or biting satires against the duke. These works made him known throughout Germany.
Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum was written in support of Hutten's mentor, the prominent theologianJohannes Reuchlin, who was engaged in a struggle to prevent the confiscation of Hebrew texts.Epistolæ contained a series of fictitious letters, addressed toHardwin von Grätz, that sarcastically attacked the scholastic theologians who were acting against Reuchlin.
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'sDe Donatione Constantini, published in 1517. He thus helped prepare the way forMartin Luther.
In 1518, Hutten accompanied his patron, Archbishop Albert, on several official journeys toParis and to theDiet of Augsburg, where Luther had his famous conference withThomas Cajetan. Subsequently, Hutten established a smallprinting press, and publishedpamphlets written in theGerman language attacking the Pope and the Roman clergy.
Archbishop Albert[5] denounced him at Rome, whereupon in 1519 Hutten became a supporter of Luther and his calls for religious reform. Unlike Luther, Hutten tried to enforce reformation by military means when he, along withFranz von Sickingen attempted to begin a popular crusade within the Holy Roman Empire against the power of the Roman Catholic Church in favour of Luther's reformed religion.
In what is known as the Knights' Revolt, they attacked the lands of theArchbishop of Trier in 1522. The archbishop held out, however, and the knights were eventually defeated in 1523, destroying them as a significant political force within the empire.
Following his defeat, Hutten tried to convinceErasmus of Rotterdam to side with the Reformation. Erasmus refused to take sides. Their estrangement culminated in a literary quarrel between the two humanists.[citation needed] Hutten'sUlrichi ab Hutten cum Erasmo Rotirodamo, Presbytero, Theologo, Expostulatio is a collection of his arguments against Erasmus; it was printed byJohannes Schott fromStrasbourg in 1523. It contains a woodcut of Hutten and Erasmus; it was thought (in 1850) to be the earliest known woodcut of the latter.[6] Erasmus refused to see Hutten when the latter came toBasel in 1523, ill and impoverished, to see him.
Hutten died in seclusion on the island ofUfenau onLake Zurich.
For the final 15 years of his life, Hutten suffered from the "French disease"[7] (orsyphilis), of which he died. He wrote a text in 1519,De morbo Gallico (On the French disease),[7] about the symptoms of what is thought to besyphilis and its treatment withGuaiacum. His text is regarded as one of the first patient narratives in thehistory of medicine;Holbein the Younger's portrait of him from 1523 is the first known realistic portrait of a person with the disease.[8]
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.[9]
Hutten was more open in the expression of his opinions than any other man, probably, of his age.[citation needed] He did much to prepare the way for the Reformation and to promote it. He was a master of theLatin language, and excelled in satirical and passionate invective. His literary life is generally divided into three periods: (1) Period of Latin poems (1509–16); (2) period of letters and orations (1515–17); (3) period of dialogues and letters in Latin and German (1517–23). In all he published some 45 different works.
One of Hutten's major works was hisArminius (1520), a Latin dialogue featuring the Germanic chieftainArminius which inspired later works on the Arminius theme (such asHeinrich von Kleist's 1808 playDie Hermannsschlacht) and encouragedGerman nationalists to view Arminius as a symbol of German national identity. Other chief works include:Ars versificandi (The Art ofProsody, 1511); theNemo (1518); the cited work on theMorbus Gallicus (1519); the volume of Steckelberg complaints against Duke Ulrich (including his fourCiceronian Orations, his Letters and thePhalarismus) also in 1519; theVadismus (1520); and the controversy with Erasmus at the end of his life. Besides these were many poems in Latin and German.
His most noteworthy contribution to literature was his portion of theEpistolæ Obscurorum Virorum (Letters of Obscure Men). At first the cloister world, not discerning its irony, welcomed the work as a defence of their position againstJohann Reuchlin; though their eyes were soon opened by the favor with which the learned world received it. TheEpistolæ 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.[3]
How far Hutten was the parent of this celebrated work was long a matter of dispute. Hutten, in a letter addressed toRichard Croke, denied that he was the author of the book, but there is no doubt as to his connexion with it. Erasmus was of opinion that there were three authors, of whomCrotus Rubianus was the originator of the idea, and Hutten a chief contributor.[3] D. F. Strauss concluded that Hutten had no share in the first part, but that his hand is clearly visible in the second part, which Strauss attributed—along with the more serious and severe tone of that bitter portion of the satire—in the main to Hutten.[10] Holborn, however, citing the later scholarship of Bömer, regards the matter of authorship "as closed in all essential points".[11] According to them, the first part was the work of Rubianus (save for the first epistle, written by Hutten), while the appendix and the second part were mostly by Hutten, with additional contributions fromHermann von dem Busche and others.[11]
Hutten writes a graphic description of the harshness of life as a vassal knight (aLehnsmann) in medieval Europe in a letter toWillibald Pirckheimer(1470–1530) that dispels the glamour with which the life of the nobility is sometimes viewed.
In addition to Hans von Hutten, Ulrich von Hutten was also related to the German adventurerPhilipp von Hutten.[citation needed]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Carl Schurz,Reminiscences, Volume I, Chapters IV and V, pp. 110–12.Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Kitchin, George William (1911). "Hutten, Ulrich von". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 14 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 14–15.
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