10 'Praeceptor amicissimus': Konrad Pellikan, and Models of Teacher, Student and the Ideal of Scholarship
CHAPTER 10
'Praeceptor amicissimus': Konrad Pellikan, and Models of Teacher, Student and the Ideal of Scholarship Matthew McLean Introduction In the year 1500, Konrad Pellikan, later a father of the Zurich church but then a young scholar of 22, learned that a bookseller in Tübingen had in his possession a complete Hebrew Bible, which had come to him from Pisa.
This discovery seemed to Pellikan nothing less than an act of divine providence.1 That the discovery, and the opportunity for study it presented, should seem to be an act of divine beneficence and an occasion for exultation, might seem to be the overreaction of a schoolboy, and not that of a great Bible scholar and teacher of Hebrew. He was a man whose learning was so esteemed by Zwingli, that when the reformer brought Pellikan to Zurich as professor of the Old Testament, it was on terms which bespoke an extraordinary esteem and trust.2 Yet in these years the discipline of Christian Hebraica was still in its infancy, and for Pellikan the discovery of a new text was quite invaluable, the chance to interrogate a learned man on a point of grammar a great fortune: from such small strokes of luck Pellikan sought to lay the foundations of a field of learning, to make progress.3
Pellikan, the scholars who collaborated with him, the Guardian of his Franciscan house, all shared the sense that learning must pass freely between scholars – using, not owning – and must progress with the generations.4 Their expectation was sound: when Pellikan's early student,
Sebastian Münster, published his own complete Hebrew Bible in 1534/5 it arrived as the capstone of a body of Hebrew books – dictionaries, grammars, practice texts – which demonstrated that Christian Hebraica had reached a plateau of maturity. Not that work did not remain for the next
generation of scholars – it surely did – but that it could now be widely taught and studied in the orderly and systematic manner of other disciplines; it was no longer the domain of pioneers like Pellikan, and subject to his chance meetings and discoveries.
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
Pellikan and Münster Returning from Basel to the Rufach Minorite house in 1509, Konrad
Pellikan was introduced to several new students, or more junior brothers, among whom was Sebastian Münster.7 He records that his impression of this 18-year-old was of an exceptionally studious individual, unusually hard-working and virtuous: Pellikan taught him closely in more than one discipline, beginning a relationship which would endure into the 1550s, and would see the early intellectual formation patterned upon his own. Of the teaching fare in those years, Pellikan wrote,
From the year 1508 through to the eleventh I was lecturing to the student brothers again on the entire Margarita Philosophica and on the Books of Sentences of Nicolas d'Orbellis and upon Aristotle. I communicated to the young Münster everything I had of Hebrew and astronomy, to which he added with his consideration and diligence, to the point that he became most learned in these matters. However, I was urging him to attend to his divine and human philosophy, so that one day he might also lecture to the other brothers.8
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 wideranging 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
A Model Teacher Konrad Pellikan embodied a range of admirable attributes in Münster's eyes, as his extensive and rich correspondence attests. Pellikan was most often referred to as his 'most revered teacher', or 'renowned' or 'honourable'.27 He appears as 'teacher and encourager' or as 'father and teacher', as 'most watchful teacher', and is addressed as 'finest and most learned teacher'.28 He styles Pellikan as 'of Rufach' in late September 1544, but, after that, simply as 'of Zurich' or more ornately as 'doctori Tygurino' or 'professori Tygurino'.29 The refrain is Pellikan's role as teacher, it is the unswerving reference point throughout the correspondence, but the words chosen to modify and accentuate the pedagogical role are intriguing, and capture the fuller range of the model Pellikan embodied and to which Münster was sensible. They show the extent to which teaching was more than a knowledge transaction, mechanically observed. There is renown and integrity on the teacher's part, honour and reverence on that of his student.
There is cultivation (both nurturing and doing honour), promotion, partisan support or patronage in both directions. There is recognition of office, of learning, and that both are of a place, either the comfortable humanist trait of warmly associating an individual with their patria, or their scholarship, respectfully, with a school or a church. The model expressed in these terms is representative of Münster's view of the teacher as archetype, but is both too narrow and too cool to do justice to the full range of roles performed by Pellikan for his former student; it does not capture the productivity of their on-going interactions, or the warmth and openness of their exchanges.
'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
Ideal Student Pellikan's brief direct descriptions of Münster speak to the young
Franciscan student rather than the lifelong relationship which followed; although he owed his early progress to more than one scholar, it is clear that Pellikan provided more than lessons on a particular subject, but was a model to whom Münster turned for guidance throughout his career.51Pellikan remarked on Münster's youth, but more particularly his industry, his intense emotional attraction to his particular field of study and his raw precocious ability: here he seems to be describing both a particular student and an ideal, a boy born to a particular task, given to the work by nature and ready to have his skills honed by training and toil, tireless and unjaded.52 This youthful calling was a sign of trustworthiness, that the student could be given access to books and resources, even the hard-won texts of the fledgling discipline of Christian Hebraica: mutual trusts with the fruits and course of the research of each seems to have been fundamental to the teacher-student relationship, especially as time passed.53
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:
… for we have printed again that cosmography of Ptolemy, as the first edition went within two years. We have also printed the consummatam Hebraicam grammaticam which collects in one place all the famous books of Elia [Levita] and certain other editions, and, for the reader's practice, the Book of Tobit is added in the Hebrew tongue, which the Jews printed in Constantinople in recent years.54
Münster sent such reports with almost every missive: it is entirely natural for him to report his activities and the progress being made on a shared discipline. He continues to seek advice on which books to read, where to spend his energies, which sources to seek out. He discusses material which Pellikan had sent to him to read, and sent back other texts in return for Pellikan's thoughts.55 In 1544, he reports,
I have not yet copied everything which you have collected on the minor prophets: in Jeremy I have written as far as I have reached in the lectures, I have now reached as far as the thirty second chapter, but your manuscript remains whole and safe.56
Bound up in these letters is the need Münster has for Pellikan's approval of his work, and for his assistance and judgment and, just he expects to receive advice when he asks, he also seems to expect to be asked on what is currently working.57
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:
Since there is nothing in mortal affairs which lasts forever, and everything endures a condition of vicissitude, just as in an estuary things flow this way then another, it is
scarcely possible to say, to what extent this city, after such felicities, and more than a thousand years after it was built, it was exposed to miseries and dangers.63
The experience of working as a Christian Hebraist and, perhaps, this cosmographical reading of Providence was harmonious with another quality both scholars shared. Pellikan considered himself to be a philologist above all, and eschewed active participation in confessional polemics.64 Münster similarly wished his works could be read everywhere, corresponded freely and warmly with Catholics long after his conversion and not only avoided polemic, but even regarded being made to teach theology, rather than just
Hebrew, an irritating imposition.65 The avowed preference for philology over doctrine is shared by both, and is manifest in their writings and personal correspondence.
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.
Scholarly Ideals In acting according to the ideal of model teacher and model student, in seeking to fashion themselves and their interactions towards each other in accordance with an ideal, Konrad Pellikan and Sebastian Münster were deeply engaged with another abstract: that of learning, of the model scholar.
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.
Learning and Progress: Adding to the Inheritance
There was, first of all, a sense that learning was to be shared, not possessed for one's secret satisfaction. This is apparent in the relationship between Pellikan and Münster, who shared their treasure of books and manuscripts not only with each other, but with a wider circle of students, friends, acquaintances and scholars-in-need.79 It is especially evident in the early part of the sixteenth century, when Christian Hebraica was not yet safely or rigorously established, in the way scholars passed valuable texts and lessons from one to the other, showing considerable faith: Paul of Pfedersheim entrusted Pellikan with a Hebrew manuscript of the Prophets, and he passed on what he learned to Münster; Münster took down texts by hand from Reuchlin's library, and, in turn, passed this on to others.80When new
Hebrew texts made their way from Constantinople to Oswald Schreckenfuchs, Münster was quick to make enquiries.81
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, 'Noone 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
Do not be concerned: if master Glareanus (who read your book diligently and glossed it with notes) and I applaud your work, why not issue it publicly? We know that in this matter, much must come from conjectures, where sure authors are not to be had. What if we bring authors into the light by our conjectures, how great, I beg, is the gain? See what fragile conjectures Beatus Rhenanus ventured in his Germania. Was his book condemned to the shadows because of that? Certainly not!85
The sense of obligation to pull new knowledge and authors into the light was underpinned by another, more melancholy reflection. Perhaps borne of witnessing valued scholars die in the outbreaks of the plague in Basel, or from a religious sense of the vanity of all worldly things, there is in Pellikan's Chronicon and Münster's Cosmographia an urgent sense of the need to 'collect the fragments' of the precious learning of the age, lest it be subject to catastrophic loss. For Münster, this meant the deeds and virtues of the age, the appearance of its lands and cities.86 For Pellikan, more narrowly, it was a golden age of many learned men in Zurich, which he felt should be recorded for the perpetual honour of the church and for the edification of posterity.87
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
We know that a certain prize has been offered, to print a Swiss history, but my Cosmographia perhaps influences and teaches another, just as before my [Bible] edition
with the Hebrew greatly helped Leo [Jud] and to the perfection of his; certainly they would never have observed so many things diligently, had I not come before them as teacher, which is something easily discovered from a comparison of the two editions.92
Münster is surely right – he demonstrated a method, served as an example, and provided a stock of ready-collated material for others to use: in every way a model teacher.
Conclusion These models – of teacher, of student, of a wider world of letters with shared assumptions and an innate understanding that modest acts of ingenuity and assistance could help the whole – were of their time and place. The respublica litterarum, the Schola Tigurina and the humanist sodality at Basel, the chaotic but enthusiastic network of scholarly assistance, were less well adapted to the age of professionalized, specialized learning, and learning though emulation was superseded by regulated confessional institutions of instruction. Yet those confessional academies owed a great part of their curricula to the previous world of letters, in which knowledge was to be used but could not be owned, those who taught gave freely of their erudition and their students sought to expand and refine that which they had been candidly given.
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.
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 Buchund 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'.