Section 23
1 As related in Ludwig Lavater’s Vita Conradi
Pellicani, fol. B2v: ‘Eodem anno providentia Dei contigit bibliopola[m] Tubingensem attulisse Biblia
Hebraica integra, minima forma impressa Pisauri in Italia, qu[a]e nemo curabat. Ego audiens, rogavi virum fineret
me opus aliquot diebus inspicere, dedit, dicens floreno cum dimidio posse em[i]. Audiens tam parvo aere comparari
posse, exultavi, adij meu[m] Guardianum Paulum, orans pro me fideiubere. Consensit’. Lavater’s Vita is based upon
Pellikan’s own Chronicon, his personal chronicle of his life: Das Chronikon des Konrad Pellikan. Zur
vierten Säkularfeier der Universität Tübingen, ed. Bernhard Riggenbach (Basel: Bahnmaier, 1877) (cited as:
Pellikan, Chronicon). The relationship between the two works is considered in Irena Backus, Life
Writing in Reformation Europe: Lives of Reformers by Friends, Disciples and Foes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008)
(St Andrews Studies in Reformation History), pp. 118f. Lavater’s Vita appeared as part of the 1582 edition of
Pellikan’s commentary on the Bible, In Pentateuchum siue libros quinque libros Mosis, nempe Genesim, Exodum,
Leuiticum, Numeros, Deuteronomium / Conradi Pellicani sacrarum literarum in schola Tigurina professoris,
commentarii. His accessit narratio de ortu vita et obitu eiusdem, opera Ludovici Lavateri Tigurini (Zurich:
Christoph Froschauer the Younger, 1582). On Pellikan’s publications and career, see Christoph Zürcher, Konrad
Pellikans Wirken in Zürich, 1526–1556 (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zurich, 1975) (Zürcher Beiträge zur
Reformationsgeschichte 4).
2 Zwingli arranged that Pellikan would receive: ‘a canonry with
a salary of 60 or 70 florins per year (a salary equal to Zwingli’s own), an elegant and conveniently situated
house, and holidays to make the work bearable’, Backus, Life Writing, p. 120. It was an arrangement of
which others scholars might, and did, feel envious.
3 On the same page of the Vita (fol. B2v) Pellikan
(Lavater) also describes speaking to Reuchlin: ‘Proinde interrogavi D. Reuchlinum, qui subridens dicebat, apud
Hebraeos thema verborum non esse primam personam nec indicative nec imerativi, sed tertiam singular[m] praeteriti
perfecti’.
4 On the culture of scholarship within the late mediaeval
Franciscan order to which Pellikan and Münster belonged: Janet Coleman, ‘Using not Owning – Duties, not Rights:
The Consequences of some Franciscan Perspectives on Politics’, in Michael Cusato and G. Geltner (eds),
Defenders and Critics of Franciscan Life (Leiden: Brill, 2009) (The Medieval Franciscans 6), pp. 65–84.
See also Bert Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (1210–1517) (Leiden: Brill, 2000) (Education and
Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance 11) and Neslihan Şenocak, The Poor and
the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order, 1209–1310 (Ithaca, NY et al.: Cornell University
Press, 2012).
5 In addition to the Vita and Chronicon, this
chapter will primarily draw upon Heinrich Bullinger’s Diarium, see Emil Egli (ed.), Heinrich
Bullingers Diarium (Annales vitae) der Jahre 1504–1574 (Basel: Basler Buch- und Antiquariatshandlung, 1904);
Sebastian Münster, Hebraica Biblia … (Basel: Johann Bebel, Michael Isingrin, Heinrich Petri, 1534/5);
Sebastian Münster, Evangelium secundum Matthaeum (Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1537); Sebastian Münster,
Cosmographiae Universalis (Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1550); Heinrich Pantaleon, Prosopographiae heroum
atque illustrium virorum totius Germaniæ (Basel: Nikolaus Brylinger, 1566); Konrad Pellikan, In
Pentateuchum sive libros quinque libros Mosis (Zurich: Christoph Froschauer the Younger, 1582), 6 vols,
first published 1532–39 by Christoph Froschauer the Elder in Zurich; Konrad Pellikan, De modo legendi et
intelligendi Hebraeum (Strasbourg, 1504). Münster’s letters cited below, unless otherwise stated, are drawn
from Karl Heinz Burmeister, Briefe Sebastian Münsters: Lateinisch und Deutsch (Frankfurt am Main: Insel,
1964).
6 On the biographies of the chief figures of the Reformation,
Backus, Life Writing, p. 54f.
7 Pellikan, Chronicon, p. 38: ‘Mutatus sum e Basilea
Rubiacum cum quibusdam junioribus studiosis fratribus, simulque aliunde fratribus junioribus illuc mihi missis,
inter quos erat Sebastianus Munsterus Ingelheimensis, 18. Agens tunc annum aestatis, homo studiosissimus et
laboriosus et probissumus’.
8 Pellikan, Chronicon, p. 39: ‘Ab anno ergo 1508 usque
ad undecimum praelegebam denuo studiosis fratribus Margaritam philosophicam totam et Nicolaum de Orbellis in
libros sententiarum et Aristotelis. Communicavi Munstero juveni quaecunque habebam hebraica et astronomica,
quibus adjecit sua quoque meditatione et diligentia, ut evaserit in his rebus doctissumus. Verum urgebam eum pro
virili in Philosophiam divinam et humanam, quam esset aliquando fratribus quoque aliis praelecturus’.
9 Zürcher, Konrad Pellikans Wirken, offers a
biographical reconstruction of Pellikan’s life, pp. 21–83.
10 Backus, Life Writing, p. 117. Pellikan was assigned
as the Lektor of the Franciscans in Basel, which brought him into contact with the bishop, and with the many
scholarly luminaries resident in the city in those years. Of Reuchlin: Pellikan, Chronicon, p. 19;
Lavater, Vita, fol. B2v.
11 Pellikan, Chronicon, p. 69f. On this matter, Lavater
is silent, unwilling to show Pellikan in any way out of step with the ‘solid family values’ of Zurich in the late
sixteenth century: Backus, Life Writing, p. 119. The difference between Lavater’s public text and
Pellikan’s private record of his life which was intended to ‘preserve family memory and edify his sons’ (Backus,
Life Writing, p. 118) is striking: here, as in his teaching, Pellikan is entirely open with those he
trusts.
12 Pellikan, Chronicon, pp. 59–67.
13 Karl Heinz Burmeister, Sebastian Münster: Versuch eines
biographischen Gesambildes (Basel and Stuttgart: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1963), argues for this
birthyear, and corrects the notion that Münster grew up in poverty.
14 The sources are unclear on this point, referring only to study
at an ‘academia’ (Heinrich Pantaleon) or ‘ješîbâ’ (Schreckenfuchs). Burmeister, Sebastian Münster, p.
16.
15 Under the instruction of Gregor Reisch in Freiburg.
16 The first remark has already been cited ‘homo studiosissimus
et laboriosus’ (Pellikan, Chronicon, p. 38), ‘ex auditoribus meis hactenus studiosissimus’ (D.
Martin Luthers Werke: Briefwechsel, vol. 2 [Weimar: Böhlau, 1931], p. 65) and ‘iuvenis ingenii praeclari, ad
bonas artes studii indefatigati et imprimis flagrans Hebraicae litteraturae amore’ (Konrad Pellikan, In
Pentateuchum sive quinque libros Mosis … commentarii [Zurich: Christoph Froschauer the Elder, 1532],
Preface.
17 Backus, Life Writing, p. 117.
18 Pellikan, Chronicon, p. 80: ‘Anno sequenti, nempe
1523 tempore quadragesimali veniens Provincialis Satzgerus Basileam, audivit a Magistris nostris universitatis
Basiliensis et a Canonicis quibusdam Ecclesiae majioris querelas graves contra Praedicatorem Joannem Luthart et
alios, quia Lutheranis essemus et promotores librorum Lutheris; quibus Minister permotus decrevit cum suis
consiliariis paredicits, nos tres loco movendos, tamen cum honore et citra contumeliam, substituendos alios in
nostrum locum’.
19 See the comparison of the accounts of the Chronicon
and Vita in Backus, Life Writing p. 120f.
20 Pellikan, Chronicon, p. 108.
21 Pellikan, Chronicon, p. 108: ‘Cucullae ridentur apud
nos sed si perpetuo utaris, prorsus autem nihil si adferas ut ponas, cucullato autem tibi veniendum est ad nos
propter instantem tumultum tyrannorumque improbitatem non apud alios saevientem’.
22 Which work he dedicated to Hieronymus Froben, with whose
family he enjoyed good relations; he also worked for Adam Petri as a corrector and translator.
23 Considered in Burmeister, Sebastian Münster, p. 33.
Franciscan ideals and humanist renewal impulses were not inimical (Roest, Franciscan Education, p. 169);
with Reformation ideas and publications also in circulation, removing a valuable scholar to a less feverish
environment must have made perfect sense. The confluence of reform-minded streams in Basel is striking.
24 Echoing the exchange between Zwingli and Pellikan, Münster
reflects upon the consequences of his cowl for his scholarly activities: ‘…verum monachum in cuculla
circumcursare, tametsi hactenus non rarum fuerit, iam tamen omnino exprobabile erit. Nec commode adhuc licet
abicere monachatum: nisi fortasse future spirensis dieta aliquid sit paratura de monachorum libertate, quod tamen
non credo. En quid nunc faciam? Cupio quidem dissolvi et esse ut sunt ceteri Christiani boni, verum non licet seu
non expedit adhuc, qui notior orbi sum quam cupiam. Paro iam aliquos Hebraicos et Chaldaicos libellos, verum haud
scio, an maioribus meis facultatem Basileam abeundi impetraturus sim. Id si negabitur, fortasse aliud a me
cogitabitur’. Letter, 9 March 1526, to Beatus Rhenanus. This letter appears in Karl Heinz Burmeister, Briefe
Sebastian Münsters: Lateinisch und Deutsch (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1964), as do the other letters
written by Sebastian Münster which are cited below, unless otherwise stated.
25 Possibly Pellikan similarly was once pulled in the wake of
Paul Scriptoris, ‘meus guardianus et praeceptor’. Pellikan, Chronicon, p. 16.
26 The chance came when, following the
Reformationsordnung of 1 April 1529, the University of Basel sought to find scholars to fill its various
reconstituted posts. Oecolampadius secured the council’s permission to appoint Simon Grynaeus to the Chair of
Greek: by 2 June he had arrived from Heidelberg, and on 13 June was already delivering lectures. For the Chair of
Hebrew he sought Boniface Wolfhardt, who was based in Strassburg. It appears that Wolfhardt was initially minded
to accept the offer, and travelled to Basel with Grynaeus, yet shortly after his arrival rejected the post in
order, he would later maintain, to win Münster over to the Reformation: ,‘So would many first lead a godly life,
when their material security had been guaranteed’. Presumably, Grynaeus had informed those involved of Münster’s
predicament and the opportunity to win an eminent Hebraist for the Reformation and also to salve that same
scholar’s discomfort were persuasive. Wolfhardt stepped aside, and shortly afterwards Münster arrived in Basel.
27 ‘praeceptor colendissimo’ or ‘celeberrimo’, or ‘integerrimo’.
For example Letters to Pellikan, 21 November 1543, 2 September 1544, 10 May 1543.
28 ‘praeceptor et fautor’ or as ‘pater et praeceptor’, as
‘praeceptori observandissimo’, and is addressed as ‘ornatissimo doctissimique’. Letters 11 May 1544, 12 January
1545, 1547 and 20 June 1549.
29 Letters of 2 September 1544, 2 November 1545, 9 February 1545,
and 1547.
30 ‘Pellicanus enim vir fuit candidus, sincerus, integer, a
mendacio, ab ostentatio alienissmus’. Lavater, Vita, fol. A8v.
31 Burmeister, Sebastian Münster, p. 22f.
32 Pellikan, Chronicon, p. 39, quoted above. This
generosity perhaps repeats that which Pellikan himself experienced, when ‘immersed’ in Hebrew in Tübingen.
Lavater, Vita, p. 3.
33 A fine example comes with Münster’s letter of 29 July 1542:
‘Scripsissem dudem et respondissem litteris tuis, optime vir, si idoneus aliquis obvenisset nuntius. Quae misisti
in Isaiam summa accepi gratitudine et modico labore iam pergo in lectione. Ubi absolvero Isaiam, remittam
diligenter quae misisti alterius boni viri nomine. Mittam et quae ex Geneva huc attuli, nempe posteriorem partem
tuorum in Isaiam collectaneorum, quae Viretus mihi tradidit. Laborem tuum in 12 Prophetas nondum attigi, tuto
tamen poteris illum apud me dimittere, nisi ipse egeas, tum ne una hora eo fraudaberis’.
34 See, for example, letters of 2 September 1544 and 2 November
1545.
35 1547: ‘Deinde quoque fieri potest, quod penes te sint aliqui
libri aut libelli theologici a te neglecti et reiecti posterisque tuis non necessarii, quibus iuvenem locupeltare
posses et ornare. Nec tamen volo, quod bibliothecam tuam propter ipsum interrumpas. Ille cum gaudiosuscipiet
etiam fragmenta apud te abundantia’. The letter discusses the Zurich Bible pointedly.
36 Letter of 1543.
37 Letter of 11 May 1544.
38 Münster, Biblia Hebraica, ‘5r: ‘Solatur etiam me
conscientia mea, quod non in gloriam meam et veterum reprehensionem, quibus etiam maximam debemus gratiam,
postquam id egerunt, quod praestare potuerunt, praesertim in tanta librorum penuria, hanc subierim laborem, et
quod aliud non deprompserim, quam quod Heb. textum habere deprehendi, testibus Rabinorum commentariis. Quod si
interdum in una sententia etiam apud Heb. diversam inveni lectionem, siquidem et inter illos nonunquam dissidia
inveniunt, aliis alia existimantibus, indicavi id in annotationibus’.
39 The expression appears in Pellikan, Chronicon, p. 62,
and is retained in Lavater’s Vita.
40 Pellikan, Chronicon p. 36 ‘In quibus alicubi sequebar
non tum meam conscientiam quam scholasticos quosdam Doctores mendicatium ordinum. Unde contigit, non omnia ibi
scripta solidae fuisse veritatis, sed ejus, quae tunc veritas habebatur et generaliter probabatur. Alioqui quae
de indulgentiis, purgatorio, confessione, eucharistia et papistica potestate scripta inveni, jam coeperam
suspecta habere ex lectionibus antiquorum maxime Augustini et Origenis, in quibus talia non inveneram
dogmatizata. Deprehenderam enim librum de vera et falsa penitentia non esse Augustini, sic nec librum de
Sacrementis Ambrosii, et Jeronymi quaedam detalibus loquesntia flaso fuisse adscripta deprehendi. Id quod postea
Erasmus quoque Roterdamus confirmavit et probavit luculentius’. Cf. Lavater, Vita, p. 6.
41 Christoph Zürcher, ‘Konrad Pellikan’, in Hans J. Hillerbrand
(ed.), Encyclopedia of the Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) p. 241.
42 On Hebrew knowledge with the Franciscans, Stephen G. Burnett,
Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500–1600): Authors, Books, and the Transmission of Jewish
Learning (Leiden: Brill, 2012) (Library of the Written Word 19), pp. 53–7. Pellikan records his travels
between monasteries, picking up what each had to teach, and what each had within their libraries: Lavater,
Vita, fol. B4v.
43 Roest, Franciscan Education, pp. 55, 169.
44 For example, Lavater, Vita, fol. B3r.
45 Roest, Franciscan Education, pp. 235–7.
46 Burmeister, Sebastian Münster, p. 58, and letter 2
November 1545. Letters written to Pellikan in 1543 and 1545 reveal that Münster was active in the treatment of
the sick in Basel.
47 See Münster’s letters to Pellikan of 1542, 29 July 1542, 11
May 1544, 2 September 1544. Also Lavater, Vita, fol. B7v.
48 Letter to Pellikan of 1547.
49 ‘certe ut verum fatear vetustiores literas ego in vita mea non
vidi’. Münster, Cosmographia, p. 562, and see also Cosmographia, pp. 330, 430, 514, 619.
50 Letter to Pellikan, 11 May 1544: ‘Sed necesse est, ut ruat
quod quod pater caelestis non extruxit’.
51 Compare Bibliander’s several teachers: Anja-Silvia Göing, ‘Old
and New Hebrew Grammars in the 16th Century’, in Emidio Campi et al. (eds), Scholarly Knowledge: Textbooks in
Early Modern Europe (Geneva: Droz, 2008) (Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 447), p. 169f.
52 The image corresponds to Münster’s frequent references to
places or industries where God’s gifts, natura, have been perfected by human skill, arte.
53 On the sharing of texts among scholars and students of
Christian Hebraica in its early period, Burnett, Christian Hebraism, pp. 97, 209.
54 Letter of 1542: ‘… nam excudimus rursum Cosmographiam
Ptolomaei prima edition feliciter intra biennium distracta. Excudimus et consummatam Hebraicam grammaticam, quam
ex omnibus praeclaribus Eliae libris et quibusdam aliis editionibus in unum college, addito pro lectionis
exercitamento Tobia in Hebraica lingua, quem Iudaei Constantinopolitani superioribus annis evulgaverunt’.
55 See letters 29 July 1542 and 21 November 1543 – a period of
intense work in which Isaiah is under close discussion.
56 Letter 11 May 1544: ‘Collecteana tua in minos prophetas nondum
omnia descripsi: in Ieremia tam scribo quantum pergo in lectionibus, perveni autem iam ad 32 caput, sed exemplar
tuum tibi manet integrum et salvum’.
57 For example, letter of 1547: ‘Queres fortassis, quod meum iam
sit stadium. Dicam: absolve superioribus diebus Sphaeram mundi, olim a doctor Iudaeo in Hispania conscriptam,
quam annotationibus meis explicatorem [reddideram]’.
58 On the Christian Hebraist ‘community of the competent’, see
Stephen G. Burnett ‘Reassessing the “Basel-Wittenberg Conflict”: Dimensions of the Reformation-Era Discussion of
Hebrew Scholarship’, in Allison P. Coudert and Jeffrey S. Shoulson (eds), Hebraica Veritas? Christian
Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2004) p. 182. Jerome Friedman describes the chill which settled over scholarly community with regard to Hebrew
scholarship; animosity and risk led to those who had been friendly to the cause of Christian Hebraica
turning against it, and those who continued to study Jewish scholarship – Münster, Fagius et al. – did so under a
cloak of anti-Semitic hostility. Jerome Friedman, The Most Ancient Testimony: Sixteenth-Century
Christian-Hebraica in the Age of Renaissance Nostalgia (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1983), p. 250f.
59 Sebastian Münster, Messias Christianorum et Iudaeorum
Hebraice et Latine … (Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1539), Preface. On the rediscovery of the 1529 printing of this
text, Stephen G. Burnett, ‘A Dialogue of the Deaf: Hebrew Pedagogy and Anti-Jewish Polemic’, in Sebastian
Münster’s Messiahs of the Christians and the Jews (1529/1539)’, Archive for Reformation History 91
(2000), pp. 168–90. On this sub-genre of Christian Hebraism, Burnett, Christian Hebraism, p. 106f.
60 Lavater, Vita, fol. B4r, Münster, Hebraica
Biblia, fols β1r, β2v–β3v, 141v. Sebastian Münster, Institutiones grammaticae in Hebraeam linguam
(Basel: Johann Froben, 1524).
61 Pellikan, Chronicon, p. 128, and Matthew McLean,
The Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster: Describing the World in the Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2007) (St Andrews Studies in Reformations History), chapter 4. Pellikan’s description of Rufach begins on p. 439
of the 1550 Latin-language Cosmographia.
62 ‘The Nile once made Egypt paradise; now nothing can make it
fertile. What should we wonder if Germany has become a garden, with everything needed for man’s sufficiency and
enjoyment. We rightly attribute that to the benevolence of God. With his blessing and open hand the land becomes
fruitful and fertile and abundant in all things. By his malediction and closed hand the land is returned to
sterility, and everything perishes’, Münster, Cosmographia, p. 285. Münster’s understanding of
providence as it is to be read in history and geography is echoed by contributors to the Cosmographia.
Konrad Pellikan is closely in tune with Münster’s ideas (Cosmographia, p. 440), however, Vogelmann,
while writing on a similar theme introduces pagan notions of the fates, producing a somewhat conflated version
(Cosmographia, p. 574).
63 ‘Cum autem in rebus mortalium nihil sit perpetuum, ac
vicissitudine rerum veluti aestuario quodam fluxu refluxoque ferantur omnia, vix dici potest, quantis haec
civitatis post tam foelicitatem, et in qua plus quam annos mille constr[uc]ta fuit, aerumnis ac periculis postea
exposita fuerit’. Münster, Cosmographia, p. 440.
64 Backus, Life Writing, p. 116.
65 Letter to Pellikan, 1544. In later years he would ban
reference to theology and philosophy from his lectures on the sacred languages: ‘Tu disce sacras linguas, quibus
instructior ad sacras litteras tractandas venias, quam si mille Aristotelis commentaria devorasses’. Preface to
his Ionas propheta in quatuor orbis principalioribus linguis (included in Münster,
Institutiones). On teaching theology in Basel, ‘Quietus iam vivo exoneratus lectione theologica’: there
are several remarks on this subject in the correspondence; this is from letter 2 November 1545. Elsewhere Münster
describes his attempt to avoid the appointment in a letter of 1542, and his relief from the lectureship, letter
of 20 August 1545.
66 Letter, 9 February 1545.
67 These are discussed fully in Matthew McLean, ‘Between Basel
and Zürich: Humanist Rivalries and the Works of Sebastian Münster’, in Malcolm Walsby and Graeme Kemp (eds),
The Book Triumphant: Print in Transition in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden/Boston: Brill,
2011) (Library of the Written Word 15), pp. 270–91.
68 Johannes Stumpf, Gemeiner loblicher Eydgnoschaft, Stetten,
Landen, und Völckeren chronikwirdiger Thaaten, Beschreybung (Zurich: Christoph Froschauer the Elder, 1548).
See Gerald Strauss, ‘The Production of Johann Stumpf’s Description of the Swiss Confederation’, in his
Enacting the Reformation in Germany: Essays on Institution and Reception (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993),
pp. 104–22.
69 See variously letters of 21 November 1543, 9 February 1545, 21
June 1545. On the other hand, we have a mild reproach from Pellikan that Münster had not been suffiently bold in
pressing ahead with his Hebrew publications: Zürcher, Pellikans Wirken, p. 218.
70 Letters of 1542 and 1543 offer rich examples of this type:
‘Mitto etiam receptum pulverum contra calculum, de uff einer gebeeten schnitten unn in Win genetzet mane duabus
aut tribus horis ante prandium. Hoc tamen remedium me iam non iuvit, qui quarta die septembris gravissime per
biduum in calculo laboravi et adhuc non sum liber ab eo …’
71 Letter 17 August 1537, and on Glareanus in the
Cosmographia, p. 384f.
72 Münster writes in several places of incessant work, of
enduring privations: Letters of 21 June 1545 and 20 June 1549. These remarks, gloomy in tone, are mirrored in
Bullinger’s depiction of Leo Jud’s death from the exhaustion of work on the Bible edition of 1543 as a noble and
pious end for a great scholar. Münster resented the honour of serving as the university rector 1547–48, and
describes the difficulties he experienced working with members of its hierarchy.
73 ‘Ornavit’ is used of Reuchlin – scholars seem to decorate and
illuminate the landscape in the same way as great cities.
74 Münster, Cosmographia, pp. 129 and 255; 596; 384 and
518; 59 and 385.
75 Münster, Cosmographia, pp. 328, 405 and 644f.
76 Letter to Beatus Rhenanus, 1526.
77 Letters 20 June 1549, 11 May 1544 and March 1550. The full
composition and activities of the network of correspondents which Münster drew upon to compile the
Cosmographia is detailed in McLean, Cosmographia, chapter 3.
78 Burnett, Christian Hebraica, p. 60f. Lavater,
Vita, fol. B8r.
79 Letter 1543 to Pellikan shows the respublica litterarum
rewarding travelling scholars with unexpected books and documents.
80 Burnett, Christian Hebraica, p. 52f.
81 Letter 7 November 1544. ‘Habeo et labellum illam, qui quasi
Luciani fragmenta complectitur et habet titulum םיוא בן, sed non est בן םיוד, ut generale nostri Ecclesiasticum vocant, pro quo et tantopere Romae et alibi laborasti.
Audio Eliam multos libros e Constantinopoli exactos recepisse aut brevi recepturum. Misit et Oswaldus
Schreckenfuchsius e Memmingen due exemplaris Hebraica, sed quae pro sacris nihil faciunt, nam unum continet
Arithmeticam, alterum sphaeram materialem. Gerundensem cuperem habere, sed nescio ubi illus in procinctu assequi
valeam. Exemplar enim ante natalicia Christi prelosubicietur. Audio in Italia impressum iam recens Iosephum, sed
puto esse exemplar illud, quod antea Constantinopoli est impressum, quod et ego habeo et ante triennium primam
eius partem e regione Hebraismi verti et in orbem emisi’.
82 Letter 6 April 1539: ‘Non omnes Omnia possumus. Unus quidem
sic, alius autem sic, prout quisque a Domino accepit, dispensatorem agit mysteriorum concreditorum’.
83 Münster, Cosmographia, p. 488.
84 Aegidius Tschudi, De Prisca ac Vera Alpina Rhaetia
(Basle: Michael Isengrin, 1538). Münster felt that his Cosmographia had done much to celebrate and
conserve the present: ‘joined old with new, and again new with old; I mean I have given the ancient novelty, the
new authority, the obsolete new lustre, the obscure light, the tired thanks, and doubts, so far as is possible,
faith’. Münster, Cosmographia, p. 837, and letter, January 1550, to Gustav Wasas.
85 ‘Noli timere: si dominus Glarianus (qui diligenter librum tuum
legit et annotationibus illustravit) et ego laborem tuum approbamus, quare non in publicum editur? Scimus in his
rebus multa consequenda sola coniectura, ubi desunt certi auctores. Quodsi coniecturis nostris auctores in lucem
eduxerimus, quantum quaeso illud est emolumentum? Vide quam fragilibus saepe nitatur Beatus Rhenanus in sua
Germania coniecturis. Fuerat propterea liber illius tenebris condendus? Absit’. Letter 17 August 1537.
86 If scholars did not record the virtues of their own age, they
stood to be lost, as had the deeds and achievements of many peoples before them. Münster, Cosmographia
p. 280.
87 Pellikan, Chronicon pp. 141–3. Astonishingly, as
Irena Backus (Life Writing, p. 122) writes, ‘All those who were part of the aeropagus deserved to
commemorated. In setting down his Chronicon, Pellikan never envisaged for one moment becoming one of
those who gave the city its distinctive profile’.
88 Pellikan, Chronicon, pp. 168–78.
89 A long series of grammars from the Epitome hebraicae
grammaticae (1520) through to the Opus grammaticum consummatum (1542) either of his own authorship,
or editions of Jewish grammars such as the Moses Kimhi grammatica (1531). The Dictionarium
hebraicum (which also included Aramaic words in its lexicon) of 1523 was a first experiment which made use
of his own earliest study; this work saw six Froben editions, the last of which came in 1564. He produced several
other dictionaries: the Levita … composita verborum (1525), Dictionarium Chaldaicum (1527),
and, with Petri, the Dictionarium Trilingue (1530). Münster’s 1524 Jonas was followed by his
Proverbia Salomis (1524), Ecclesiastes (1525), Canticum Canticorum Salomis (1525), the
the Evangelium Secundum Matthaeum (1537) and later, the Tobias (1542). His 1533 Isaiah
polyglot, was a final dry run before work was begun upon the Hebraica Biblia itself.
90 Göing, ‘Old and New Hebrew Grammars’, p. 182, and Burnett,
Christian Hebraica, p. 108f. The Thesaurus Grammaticus Linguae Sanctae Hebraicae (1609) and the
Grammaticae Chaldaicae et Syriacae (1615).
91 Letter 4 May 1550.
92 Letter 9 February 1545. ‘Scimus quidem praemium propositum
fuisse, excudere Historiam Helvetiorum, sed mea Cosmographia forsan aliud suasit et docuit, sicut et antea Leonem
mea edito iuxta Hebraismum incitavit immo plurimum iuvit ad suam perficiendam, immo nunquam tam diligenter multa
observassent nisi ego monitor praecessissem, id quod facile deprehendo ex collatio utriusque editionis, quam modo
facio’.