10 ‘Praeceptor amicissimus’: Konrad Pellikan, and Models of Teacher, Student and the Ideal of Scholarship

What follows is a consideration of Konrad Pellikan not just as a teacher, but as a model pedagogue, and how his students sought to learn by emulation, to follow not just his lessons but his example, and by so doing, to participate in an ideal of scholarship which bridged the Reformation, an ideal of learning, of exchange, of publication, of progress. Importantly, they did not seek to fashion themselves according to models vainly, imitatio was not meant to be replication, the ideal student was not a counterfeit of his teacher, but to move beyond conformity, to add to that which he had been given, and to pass it onwards, to the next generation of scholars and into the deepening pool of shared knowledge. Bound to the idea of the model scholar was the reciprocal ideal of the model student, and the abstract ideal of learning within which they both existed; however, these models frequently translated imperfectly from rarefied ideal to quotidian world, and a study of the intersecting careers of Pellikan and Münster, their works and correspondence, illustrates these ideals were vexed at times by conflicting loyalties and complicated by the challenges of negotiating a scholarly landscape which had been open in their memory, but was now crossed with the religious and political boundaries of the Reformation.⁵ The extent to which the scholarly ideals, the models of teacher and student, could transcend these new realities is a question upon which the relationship of these two learned men can shine some light: it takes in the structured world of the Franciscan order before the Reformation, a fraught personal transition to the fledgling churches of Zurich and Basel respectively, and finally settles in the increasingly confident scholarly culture of the reformed respublica litterarum. If the people which emerge are less perfect than the crafted ideals of the mannered biographies of Reformation leaders, it is clear that Pellikan and Münster still sought to serve the ideal of learning, deepening and refining their shared disciplines, through archetypes of teacher, student and scholar which had their roots in the Catholic world, but bore fruit in the separate academies, schools and printhouses of the reformed churches of Basel and Zurich.⁶

The defining interests of Münster’s scholarly career, the pursuit of the Hebraica Veritas and the measurement of space (although terrestrial rather than celestial) were, it seems, crystallized from his earliest lessons with Pellikan; thereafter it is hard not to remark on the manners in which the younger scholars career, and, indeed, life appears to have been either fortunately in harmony with that of his teacher, or to have been consciously shaped in emulation of it.

Pellikan, a native of Rufach in Upper Alsace, entered the Franciscan monastery there as a novice in 1493, and in 1495 to the house in Tübingen, where he studied Greek, Latin and theology.⁹ Pellikan had been brought up by his uncle, who was a member of the humanist sodality which surrounded Johann von Dalberg, and humanist connections and pursuits are a constant through his early career as much as his late: he met and studied with Reuchlin, he was part of the circle of Christoph von Utenheim, and, from 1516, was closely associated with Erasmus.¹⁰ Further colour may be added to the intriguing mixture of a traditionally structured monastic education and involvement with humanist sodalities. His upbringing by his uncle Jodocus Gallus involved criticism of aspects of the Franciscan rule – the order of which he was also a member; Pellikan wrote of his uncle’s disapproval for and violation of the rule of celibacy, but considered a pious man, one who would have been sympathetic to the views of the reformers on this issue.¹¹ Pellikan’s journey to the Rome of Leo X to represent his province in the general chapter of the Franciscans, an experience described in great detail in the Chronicon, also adds texture to his complex and wide-ranging intellectual formation.¹²

Sebastian Münster was not born into similarly scholarly circles, but gradually made his way through the stages of education available until he was able to join them. Born in Neideringelheim in 1488, Münster’s father was the master of the Hospital of the Holy Ghost, and was able send his sons to the town’s single school.¹³ He seems then to have studied at Heidelberg, at either the university or with the Franciscan Generalstudium, learning cosmology, mathematics and the natural sciences alongside theology and logic.¹⁴ In this period he studied the traditional quadrivium and trivium, before entering the Franciscans in 1506, and making his profession the following year; brief periods of study in Freiburg and Louvain saw Münster begin the striking combination of Hebrew, theology and geography, which would take shape under the instruction of Pellikan in Rufach.¹⁵ Here, Pellikan was presented with a student who was grounded in the discipline he himself was working to advance, and who was precocious and industrious and passionate about scholarship: ‘a most studious and industrious man’, ‘the most studious of all my students’, ‘a young man of outstanding talent, tireless in his study of good letters and especially aflame with a love of Hebrew literature’.¹⁶

At the same time, Münster encountered a teacher who could not only greatly expand his knowledge of Hebrew, but who also embodied an ideal of scholarship: the first Christian to publish a Hebrew grammar – a pioneer of the discipline, deeply learned and sought after.¹⁷

Pellikan was made secretary to the Franciscan provincial Kaspar Schatzgeyer in 1514, and served as Guardian in Rufach before being made the Guardian of the Franciscans in Basel in 1519; he taught at the university there, and in 1523 was made professor of theology, at the same time as Johannes Oecolampadius. He was involved with the production of Adam Petri’s Luther editions of 1520, which was the root of his later rift – tragoedia – with Schatzgeyer who considered him a promoter of Luther’s works.¹⁸ The true nature of Pellikan’s transition to the Reformation was more gradual and ambiguous than Lavater later represented it.¹⁹ With the support of the magistrates, Pellikan was able to remain among the Franciscans and to continue teaching in Basel until 1526, although he ceased to be Guardian in 1524. As his situation became increasingly difficult he received letters from Zwingli, offering him a place and a position in Zurich; the first he received coolly, reluctant to abandon Basel and unsure what awaited him in Zurich. The second letter made it explicit that Pellikan would enjoy generous living conditions in Zurich, and would read and comment upon a certain amount of Hebrew each day in return.²⁰ That Pellikan’s decision to accept was not indicative of having already undergone a decisive and immediate break with his order or with Catholicism is apparent in Zwingli’s advice on continuing to wear his Franciscan habit: he should continue to wear it for travel, even if it was now derided in Zurich.²¹

Münster seems to have felt Pellikan’s departure keenly: he was settled in Basel from 1518 until 1521, and enjoyed working not just with his teacher, but a wider circle of humanists and erudite printers, producing his first original contribution, the Epitome Hebraicae Grammaticae in 1520.²² He was instructed by his superiors in the Franciscans to leave Basel for Heidelberg, where, by the end of 1521 he was teaching Hebrew and theology; from 1524–27 he occupied a professorship there. This move was most likely effected to separate Münster from Pellikan and the controversies abroad in Basel, and to focus his mind on more narrowly linguistic studies.²³ He was able, with permission, to travel to Basel for brief visits, to oversee the printing of works, but Pellikan’s departure for Zurich – certainly inaccessible to Münster – marked the beginning of a period of scholarly silence from this most prolific of scholars. From 1527 to 1529, no new works were produced, and no biographical information survives from that time. This may imply a difficulty finding new printers, or increasing tensions between Münster and his university superiors in Heidelberg; it is likely, however, that he felt excluded from the scholarly world in which he felt he belonged, and increasingly impeded from his work.²⁴ Münster felt the pull of Pellikan’s learned circle in Basel before 1527; afterwards he may have felt that the scholarly existence he wished for could only be obtained by again following his teacher’s example.²⁵ When an opportunity was engineered in 1529 to allow Münster to take up a post in newly reformed Basel, he seized it, assuming the chair of Hebrew continuously through to his death in 1552.²⁶

‘Pellicanus was an open, honourable sincere man, deceit and ostentation were utterly alien to him’; Lavater’s preamble to the Vita is written in the spirit of encomium and follows the confessional self-representation of the Zurich church in the latter part of the sixteenth century.³⁰ It does, however, articulate a key aspect of Pellikan as the model pedagogue, and, indeed, the ideal of learning which the two men shared: open-handedness with knowledge, a generosity with one’s current stock of information without reserve, deception or boastfulness. We meet this characteristic from Münster’s earliest studies with Pellikan, when he was allowed to take full copies of Pellikan’s manuscript Hebrew writings.³¹ This is what he meant when he wrote that he had shared everything that he had of Hebrew and astronomy with the young Münster, allowing him to become most learned in these matters.³² Openness, the free exchange of knowledge, continued to be a defining characteristic of their exchanges through the following decades: materials, unpublished manuscripts and rare documents flowed between them constantly, to the point where the mechanics of arranging the movement of parcels of paper could dominate their letters.³³ Requests are made and answered, suggestions and recommendations sought and provided. It is striking the extent to which the student saw his teacher’s collections of sources and bookshelves as extensions of his own, to be accessed and apportioned as immediate needs dictated. To request Pellikan’s writings on Ezekiel seemed perfectly natural, to request things be sent for copying, to be returned, but for other materials to be sent back with the courier a normal matter.³⁴ Writing to Pellikan on behalf of an associate in need of books for study, Münster is quite comfortable suggesting which texts his teacher should feel free to donate: ‘scraps from your abundance’.³⁵

This belief in the open exchange of learning was carried beyond Münster’s dealings with his teacher to his wider interactions with the republic of letters; it infused his sense of how scholars treated one another. And, perhaps surprisingly, his recorded experiences suggest that he had reason to believe this. He describes to Pellikan the books to which he was given access by a stranger, the antiquities he was permitted to view and the hospitality he was granted.³⁶ He recounts often and at length the materials and information given to him by individual scholars, magistrates and artists for inclusion in his Cosmographiae Universalis – including contributions from the Archbishop of Uppsala, then based in Rome (this in 1544).³⁷ If Münster expected at every turn that men of learning would to a greater or lesser extent follow the model of his teacher, his expectations seem frequently to have been generously rewarded.

The ideal of openness, from teacher to student, finds expression in another overlapping area of Pellikan and Münster’s scholarly work. In glossing the Hebrew and Latin text of his 1534/5 Old Testament, Münster practiced this same generous approach: whatever he had, he gave to the reader, the distant student, and exercised the trust that they would exercise discrimination.

Münster’s method was to present the reader with the unexpurgated rabbinic commentaries on the text, grammatical and interpretational material, usually in an unaltered form, with both Hebrew quotation and his Latin translation.³⁸ Where the matter was difficult and an answer unclear, Münster presented multiple interpretations, refusing to pass judgment himself, but instead trusting the reader to reach their own conclusion; like the instruction he received from Pellikan and delivered in his lectures in Basel, he offered the range of interpretations known to him, gave guidance, but did not seek to narrow these down to a single dogma. Seeking to disseminate his learning and demystify the Hebrew text for Christian students, Münster was extending the research and classroom principles of his teacher through the press.

This ingenuous attitude to learning and the texts upon which it was based may have played a part in leading Pellikan into ‘this business of Luther and Zwingli’, and drawn Münster in his wake.³⁹ The Chronicon gives a sense that Pellikan believes he is working in a fortunate time because the number of texts and the quality of them is multiplying year by year, and scholars, men of learning like Erasmus, have shown that the doctrines of the Catholic church did not rest so surely on their proof texts as had been claimed.⁴⁰ A deepening understanding of Christian texts and a growing disquiet at the wonted manner of their use helps explain scholarly activity of Pellikan in Basel which affronted his superiors; it certainly does not seem to be any disaffection with Franciscan culture, with the manner in which he was able to study and teach while a member of the order.

How great an influence upon the models of teacher and of student did the experience of study and life within the Franciscan orders have upon Pellikan and Münster? The two were aged 48 and 41 respectively when they formally accepted the Reformation, although both had been involved with its texts, arguments and protagonists for some years before their official conversions. The fraternal model of instruction may have been profoundly influential, yet in many ways the scholarly world of the Minorites seems to have been in accord with the values of the respublica litterarum: there was no fundamental hostility between the Franciscan pursuit of knowledge and that of the reformed humanists of Zurich and Basel. Pellikan’s Chronicon offers an insight into the Franciscan order which, in the upper Rhine area, was caught between late scholasticism and humanism.⁴¹ Knowledge of demanding subjects such as Hebrew were transmitted within these houses, which served as schools or channels of learning, in the manners of the discretely functioning but interconnected humanist sodalities of the upper Rhine.⁴² The idea that learning is used but not owned, that one must approach learning in a spirit of humility, are characteristics of Franciscan education, and echo the openness apparent in Pellikan and Münster’s teaching of Hebrew.⁴³ That within Pellikan’s house lectures were given on Ptolemy, the astrolabe, Euclid suggests something of the lively variety of learned interests pursued by the humanists of Münster’s circle.

The shared experience of life within the Franciscans must have conditioned Pellikan’s understanding of what it was to teach, and Münster’s of what to learn. They experienced a system of learning which was disciplined day to day, but subject to sudden upheavals as personnel might be moved to another house for political reasons, to avoid the plague, to avoid the spread of heterodox ideas.⁴⁴ They taught and studied in a world in which the communal life was never reduced to a mere ‘facilitative shell for students and teachers’.⁴⁵ Their studies were intermingled with manual labour, care for the sick, the observances of Minorite life: they were to act as servants to one another.

These mental habits as models of behaviour cannot have been easily dismissed – even long after Münster was settled in Basel he converted the garden of his house on the Sternengässlein to vines and crops to which he could tend.⁴⁶ The conversations carried on between Pellikan and Münster through the 1530s and 1540s suggest that they retained a close interest in the fortunes of their former order and affection for its culture and members. They discuss often what their former brothers are doing, whether they still preach, how their numbers have declined – to four, to two – and in what conditions they now lived, how hungry they were, how the mortuary had filled up.⁴⁷ Münster refers to ‘our’ Franciscans.⁴⁸ His reports of monasteries he has visited, the use he has made of their libraries and the rare texts which he has handled are plentiful in the Cosmographia: they are in no way treated as corrupt and groundless institutions, rather he celebrates their antiquity (‘Certainly, to confess the truth, I have never in my life seen more ancient letters’) and value as treasuries of learning.⁴⁹As places of learning, and of genuine antiquity, the orders and their houses retained Pellikan and Münster’s esteem, even after they had entered the reformed church; sharing the news of their hardships endured by their old order, Münster wrote that ‘what God does not raise up must fall’, but the tone of the letter is melancholy.⁵⁰

Correspondence between the two scholars gives an unmistakable sense that, throughout their careers, their individual projects were communal projects, and that, sometimes literally sometimes only figuratively, their backs were bent over the same tasks. Münster details the progress, fortunate discoveries and testing setbacks which he was making in detail to Pellikan:

The exchange of material and discussions of progress testifies to the sense of shared purpose, shared goals of the two scholars: theirs was an urgent, on-going enterprise.

The harmony of purpose and approach of teacher and student extends beyond a collaboration upon and sharing of texts. Their shared experience as Christian scholars working with Hebrew texts and rabbinic commentaries to an extent moulded them in similar ways: they were pioneers of a discipline, and encountered and were forced to deflect suspicion because of that. In the front rank of the Christian Hebraist ‘community of the competent’, a little flock of ‘intimate character’, they experienced unmerited censure at times, and were forced to assume a defensive position, justifying their research.⁵⁸ Münster addresses this in the preface to his Hebrew Bible, anticipating the attacks to come, and he, like Pellikan, wrote what were ostensibly ‘missionary’ texts directed towards Jewish readers in order to emphasize their credentials as emphatically partisan Christians.⁵⁹ Yet both believed absolutely in the need to go to the source, and both sought out Jewish teachers, pored over medieval Jewish exegesis and attended synagogues in order to increase their understanding of unwritten traditions and teachings.⁶⁰

Teacher and student shared an interest in geography and history, and moreover shared a manner of writing and interpreting it. Pellikan’s contribution to Münster’s Cosmographia which described his native Rufach is in perfect step with Münster’s approach to chorographical description: avowedly simple in style, treating topography, urban setting, produce and fertility, human history and present-day government, customs, deeds.⁶¹ More strikingly, both understood geographical change to be linked to historical change, and that just as God raised and dashed nations according to his will and their virtue, so too the land became fertile or sterile at his desire, in response to conduct of the people inhabiting it.⁶² This understanding of divine Providence, read in the ceaselessly changing historical and environmental fortunes of peoples, is articulated by Pellikan:

It should not be assumed that the teacher-student relationship of Pellikan and Münster was entirely as harmonious as the above would suggest; models, imitatio, help self-fashioning and make the transmission of knowledge, culture and ultimately scholarly progress possible. Yet friction was inevitable in a community composed of people rather than abstract ideals: several such points of disagreement can be found in their works and correspondence. On a purely material level, Münster wrote several letters to his teacher which expressed disappointment that Pellikan was not active enough in helping bring to justice a former lodger and student of Münster’s who had defrauded him. This affair plays out across the letters of 1545, as Münster appeals to ‘me praeceptor’ to intercede energetically, seemingly to little avail. Perhaps the most interesting point in these exchanges is that the rogue in question seems to have been used to the company of scholars and to have known exactly how to exploit the model of student: claiming that he urgently needed the money for books: ‘thus may the vainest of men deceive the most ingenuous’.⁶⁶ There were also points of competition between the interests of authors and printers in Zurich and Basel which saw Pellikan and Münster in opposing camps.⁶⁷ The use of Münster’s Latin Old Testament translation in the 1539 Zurich Bible, the debate over whether Bibliander’s Koran (1543) was fit to print and the tension caused by the appearance of Johannes Stumpf’s Beschreybung (1548), a competitor for Münster’s 1544 Cosmographia, all caused him anxiety, and an acute sense of exclusion from the Zurich scholarly sodality of which Pellikan was a leading figure.⁶⁸ Considering how stressful each episode seems to have been for Münster, how deeply it affected his interests in Basel, it is impressive how restrained were his reproaches, and how little disruption there was overall to his interaction and collaborations with his teacher.⁶⁹

These moments when the interests of teacher and student were at odds were infrequent, if uncomfortable to read. What is consistent through the surviving correspondence, and in their references to each other, is the warmth of their affection, and their solicitude for each other’s work, families and health. Mingling with scholarly matters are inquiries about (and greetings from) their wives, information about wider family members, discussions of food and wine, of folk treatments for illnesses, gossip about their respective cities and tales of travel abroad.⁷⁰ It might not be possible to conform to an ideal model under every circumstance, but the departures need not always be occasioned by acrimony.

From their letters and their books, it is possible to give some shape to this model scholar, as conceived by Pellikan and Münster. He would, it seems, pursue more than one field of study, contributing, for example, to Christian Hebraica, to geography or the writing of history – and often concurrently.⁷¹ They may be sensible to the connectedness of seemingly disparate disciplines. Similarly, he would be multi-lingual, publishing in more than one tongue, again in concurrent editions. Rather than favouring offices, even those of great dignity, he would immerse himself in his work, spurning mealtimes, suffering exhaustion in the name of spreading good letters.⁷² Instances of individual model scholars appear throughout the Cosmographia, scattered across and decorating the landscape, like valuable natural assets.⁷³ Erasmus is associated with humanitatem et benignitatem, with education and important writings; Stöffler’s books and instruments are the basis of immortality; Tschudi demonstrated many talents, as did Glareanus, who also produced excellent discipulos.⁷⁴ Beatus Rhenanus wrote widely, engaged in many learned conversations, was garlanded with praise by Boniface Amerbach and rediscovered books thought to have been lost.⁷⁵ The list of names is extraordinary for its exhaustiveness, a veritable early modern Who’s Who, and for the way it carefully gives men of letters their deserved praise, amidst the litany of nobles and princes of the church, ancient and contemporary. Model scholars were celebrated and dignified, and the model was one with a distinctly Swiss reformed, upper Rhine accent.

This network of individual scholars operated as a network of the learned, a colourful, regional tapestry of erudition, in which each received his due recognition for his works, and all provided assistance to others. As an abstract, the republic of good letters could replicate the roles which teacher and student played for each other, but as peers and on a wider, diffuse basis. They collaborated on scholarly investigations and exchanged information, provided texts, materials, news and advice. They provided hospitality, vital given the difficulties and dangers of travel, helped seek and secure patronage even when it seemed that ‘princes no longer care for letters and arts’ and that their ‘purses are closed’.⁷⁶ And, discreetly, the network of learned men was often able to ignore confessional hue in asking or granting assistance: when Münster wrote that his Cosmographia could not have been assembled without the freely given writings and honest support of many men, he included in that number many Catholic scholars to whom he had written, and from whom he received prompt help.⁷⁷Neither Pellikan nor Münster had departed from the Catholic church in a fury, neither wished ill of their former order or confreres: Münster owed Catholic scholars for some insights into Hebrew as well as for contribution to his cosmography, and in Pellikan, too, one gets something of a sense that in the multiplication of the available texts and the refinement of biblical knowledge, learned men of the past, in contemporary Zurich and Basel, and in the wider scholarly world, were all in collaboration.⁷⁸ This wider community of scholars, the respublica litterarum, shared the same sense of responsibility to promote and advance good letters; these models were not vain posture, they helped to drive progress.

This ideal of learning, which is to be used and shared rather than owned, connects to the ideal notion that maintaining and expanding the stock of reliable knowledge is a collective responsibility: the learned were bound to the corporate task, guarding what was known against loss, while also adding to and refining that knowledge. As Münster wrote to Bullinger, ‘No-one can do everything: one person does this, and another that, according to what they receive from the Lord, who distributes and entrusts mysteries’: everyone must perform their part.⁸² In this age, not only had scholars each been given their part to play in the whole, but God had also given them printing, for the explicit purpose of expanding and saving knowledge.⁸³ This twofold duty meant, on the one hand, seeking out new texts and new authors, and spurring them, encouraging them collectively, to bring their writings into the light though personal appeals and urgings and by personal examples. Münster performed this in the case of Aegidius Tschudi’s Rhaetia: he urges that this chorographical work be brought out of the darkness, citing in his support for many other scholars who were of the same opinion – Glareanus, Amerbach and Froben:⁸⁴

But the model scholar was more than a custodian: as teacher he must give fully and openly, as student he must transmit faithfully to the next generation, but also better the learning with which he has been entrusted as a consequence of his merit and work, natura et arte.

It emerges from the Chronicon that Pellikan sees scholarly progress in the gradual multiplication of available books: as time passes, he increasingly had the raw materials he needed to learn, and then to teach and write.⁸⁸Through his generation, thanks in part to his own efforts, bare shelves gradually filled themselves, suppositions became surer, dark and doubtful matters were exposed to light. The idea is more explicit in Münster: each scholarly accomplishment cooperates in its own surpassing; the summit of his ascent will be the point of departure for the next generation. Münster’s Hebrew education took a decisive step forward under Pellikan’s instruction, copying by hand his teacher’s copies of Hebrew works. Münster went on to produce a series of grammars, dictionaries and practice texts, and his diglot Hebrew Bible, with its rabbinic commentaries: a complete set of printed Hebrew learning tools, providing the needs of classroom and professorial study.⁸⁹ Yet his work could quickly be incorporated into the textbooks of other authors, as was the case with Bibliander, and was eclipsed decisively by the advent of Johannes Buxtorf’s grammars half a century later.⁹⁰ While he enjoys the idea that his age has far surpassed the geographical knowledge of the ancients, he reflects upon the fact that the publication of his Cosmographia will inspire rivals, as was the case with Stumpf:⁹¹

In Konrad Pellikan and Sebastian Münster we have the perfect illustrations of the models of learned teacher and student as they were understood and lived by the generation of scholars immediately before and after the advent of the Reformation. Furthermore, these two extraordinary careers, productive and influential, offer a vivid illustration of the way in which embracing such ideals of scholarly life and work were not vain display, unimaginative conformity. In addition to transmitting a culture which provided for the preservation of learning through transmission, it also embedded the notion of forward movement, of progress: imitation meant not stagnation, but the opportunity for each successive generation to add more detail to the existing design, to refine rather than to overwrite.