PEUTINGER, KONRAD. - One of the best-known humanists of Germany at the time of the "Reformation". Born in Augsburg on 16 Oct. 1465, died there on 28 Dec. 1547, he attended the Universities of Padua and Bologna and also studied in Rome.
In 1490 he entered the service of his native city, then among the most flourishing commercial centers, holding from 1490 to 1534 the very important office of Stodtschreiber (chief secretary of the Commune for politics, administration and commerce). He was a close friend of Emperor Maximilian I, who used him for various diplomatic missions. He was in contact with many other humanists, with artists (Dürer) and with figures of the political and cultural life of the time.
A great collector of antiquities of every kind, he received as early as 1507 from his friend Celtes the famous tabula pentingeriana, a Roman itinerary-map (v. ITINERARI). A follower of Plato's philosophy, he was a rigid opponent of scholasticism and also favored Luther's work in its beginnings; soon, however, glimpsing its disastrous political and religious consequences (Augsburg, with its imperial diets, was at the center of the Protestant movement), he broke away from it and remained faithful to the religion of his forefathers. Among many other things he published in 1505: Romanae vetustatis fragmenta in Augusta Vindelicorum et ejus dioecesi (Augsburg 1520, 2nd ed.); and the Gothic history of Jordanes as well as the Lombard history of Paul the Deacon.
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Giuseppe Löw