PELLIKAN, KONRAD. - Born at Ruffach (Alsace) on 8 or 9 January 1478; died at Zurich on 6 April 1556. He studied at Heidelberg from 1491 to 1492; in the following year he became a Franciscan in his native town. Sent to Tübingen, he studied Hebrew thoroughly and composed a grammar, the first to appear in the German language; in 1501 Reuchlin invited him to collaborate on his Hebrew dictionary. In that same year he was also ordained priest and assigned to teach theology at Basle, where he collaborated on the edition of the works of St Augustine for the publisher Amerbach.
In 1508 he was lector at Ruffach, in 1511 guardian at Pforzheim, in 1514 provincial secretary, in 1517 guardian at Ruffach, and in 1519 at Basle. In a summary of Christian doctrine (Imbegriff der christlichen Lehre) he had already included certain errors; he subsequently turned ever more toward the Protestant Reformation, and in 1526 he abandoned the religious habit, although he had already been outside obedience since 1524, when the Protestants appointed him professor of theology at the University of Basle, and two years later at Zurich, on Zwingli's advice, as professor of Hebrew. In August 1526 he took a wife, and in 1528 he married for the second time. In 1536 he collaborated in drafting the first Confessio Helvetica. He wrote various other works, especially commentaries on Holy Scripture, for the most part unpublished.