PEUTINGER, KONRAD. - One of the best-known German humanists at the time of the “Reformation.” Born in Augusta on 16 October 1465, he died there on 28 December 1547; he attended the Universities of Padova and Bologna and also studied in Rome.
In 1490 he entered the service of his native city, then among the most flourishing commercial centres, holding from 1490 to 1534 the highly important office of Stodtschreiber (chief secretary of the municipality for politics, administration, and commerce). He was a close friend of Emperor Massimiliano I, who employed him on various diplomatic missions. He was in contact with many other humanists, with artists (Dürer), and with figures in the political and cultural life of the time.
A great collector of every kind of antiquity, he received as early as 1507 from his friend Celtes the celebrated tabula pentingeriana, a Roman itinerary-map (v. ITINERARI). A follower of the philosophy of Platone, he was a staunch opponent of scholasticism and at first also favoured the work of Lutero; but he soon broke with it, foreseeing its disastrous political and religious consequences (Augusta, with its imperial diets, was at the centre of the Protestant movement), 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 (Augusta 1520, 2nd ed.); and the Gothic history of Jordanes as well as the Lombard history of Paolo Diacono.