Pellikan, Konrad

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 that was the first to appear in the German language; he was invited by Reuchlin to collaborate on his Hebrew dictionary in 1501. In that year he was also ordained a priest and assigned to the teaching of theology at Basel, where he collaborated on the edition of the works of St. Augustine for the publisher Amerbach.

In 1508 he was a lecturer at Ruffach, in 1511 guardian at Pforzheim, in 1514 provincial secretary, in 1517 guardian at Ruffach and in 1519 at Basel. In a summa of Christian doctrine (Imbegriff der christlichen Lehre) he had already inserted some errors: he then oriented himself ever more toward the Protestant Reformation and in 1526 he left the religious habit, but he had already been outside obedience since 1524, when he was appointed by the Protestants as professor of theology at the University of Basel, and two years later at Zurich, on the advice of Zwingli, as professor of Hebrew. In August 1526 he took a wife and in 1528 he entered into a second marriage. He collaborated in 1536 on the drafting of the first Confessio Helvetica. He wrote various other works, especially commentaries on Holy Scripture, for the most part unpublished.

Alberto Ghinato