HUTTEN, Ulrich von. - Reformer, b. in the castle of Stackelberg on 21 April 1488 into a family of ancient Franconian knights, d. at Hufnau on 31 Aug. 1523. Destined by his father for an ecclesiastical career, he abandoned the Convent of Fulda in 1505; it is not known whether he had already pronounced his vows: certainly his hatred for the clergy was already well developed at that time; he continued his studies at the University of Cologne and at Erfurt; he traveled in Italy (1512-13; 1513-17). In 1518 he launched, at the Diet of Augsburg, his cry against Rome and against the princes of Germany, suffocators of the freedom of that knightly class to which he belonged.

In 1519 he bound the fate of his pungent polemicist's pen to the Lutheran attack against indulgences, and then, with his various libels and dialogues, to the struggle that Protestantism waged against the Curia and the clergy. His adherence to the Protestant revolution is not theological-dogmatic so much as political-social: if his aversion to the Roman Curia links up with the polemics of Italian Humanism, it nonetheless sinks its roots into the consciousness of a proud "knight" who wishes to react against the economic and political influence of the Curia in the Germanic world and against the connivance that certain princes have had with it. Against Romanism H. hypostatizes the figure of Arminius as that of the hero of the natio germanica: the myth of Arminius that is at the origins of the concept of Germanic national freedom, and that would be transmitted to the whole of Germanic political writing down to Romanticism and racist neo-paganism. His work as a libelist was very notable in sixteenth-century Germany, even if his attempt to be the authorized intermediary between the knights and the Protestant Reformation did not obtain those practical successes that he hoped for. On the other hand, apart from the anti-Roman political-national aspect, his interest in a true religious reform was scant: for example, he was not directly interested in the inner problem of the soul or in a theological revision of Catholicism, so much as in more trivial motives, such as, for example, the marriage of the clergy. The bulk of his activity was carried out under the protection of Franz von Sickingen, the condottiero his friend, his companion in ideas in the struggle against the territorial princes.

Bibliography12 works

BIBL.: P. Kalkoff, U. von H. und die Reformation, Leipzig 1920; W. Kaegi, H. und Erasmus, ihre Freundschaft und ihr Streit, in Historische Vierteljahrschrift, 12 (1924-25), pp. 200-278 and 461-514; P. Kalkoff, Huttens Vagantenzeit und Untergang, Weimar 1925; D. F. Strauss, U. von H., ed. edited by O. Clemen, Leipzig 1927; P. Held, U. von H., ibid. 1948; F. Walser, Die politische Entwicklung Ulrich von H. während der Entscheidungsjahre der Reformation, Munich 1928; O. Flake, U. von H., die tragische Historie des ersten politischen Deutschen, Berlin 1929; H. Holborn, U. von H., Leipzig 1929; D. Cantimori, U. von H. e i rapporti tra Rinascimento e riforma, Pisa 1930; H. Grimm, Huttens Lehrjahre, Frankfurt-Berlin 1938; M. Gravier, Luther et l'opinion publique, Paris 1942, passim; H. Drewine, Vier Gestalten aus dem Zeitalter des Humanismus, St. Gallen 1946, pp. 215-84.

Massimo Petrocchi

@incollection{ec6_hutten_ulrich_von, author = {Petrocchi, Massimo}, title = {Hutten, ulrich von}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VI}, pages = {1517--1518}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/hutten-ulrich-von} }

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Hutten, Ulrich von

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