Pirkheimer, Willibald

PIRKHEIMER, WILLIBALD. -
A noted humanist of Germany, b. at Eichstätt on
5 Dec. 1470, d. at Nuremberg on 22 Dec. 1530.

He attended the University of Padua (1489) for Greek
letters, and that of Pavia (1482) for law. He made various
journeys, forming extensive friendships with the scholars of
his time. Having moved to Nuremberg, a free imperial
city and a center of high culture, he gathered in his house,
soon famous as a hospitium eruditorum, an antiquarian
museum and a great classical library. He was a particular
friend of Dürer. With the most celebrated humanists of the time
he maintained a very extensive correspondence. From 1496 until his death he was
also a councilor of the city and took a lively part in the
political life of this very turbulent period. At the beginning
he favored Luther's reform, but as early as 1524, given the
political-religious consequences, he became its opponent and
a satirical opponent. He ably supported his sister Charitas,
abbess of the Poor Clares.

He published many writings, among them Germaniae ex variis
scriptoribus perbrevis explicatio, a work that had many
editions; against Oecolampadius: De vero Christi carne et
sanguine ad J. Oecolampadium responsio (1526); he described
the Swiss war, in which he had taken part, and left an
autobiography. He then published many works of the Fathers (St. Fulgentius
and St. Gregory of Nazianzus) and of the classics (Isocrates,
Plutarch, Plato, Lucian, etc.). The Opera omnia were
published for the first time in 1610 (Frankfurt) and, after
other editions, recently in 1934 in 3 vols. by E. Reicke-
A. Reimann.