WIMPFELING, JAKOB. - Humanist and theologian of the Upper Rhine, born at Schlettstadt on 25 June 1450, died there on 15 Nov. 1528. He attended the school of the Brethren of the Common Life in his native town. After the early death of his father, a saddler, W. began his studies at the Faculty of Arts in Freiburg in Br. (1464).
He completed his theological studies at Erfurt (1468) and Heidelberg (1470). While he was preacher at the cathedral in Spira (1483-1496) he prepared himself for greater scholarly tasks. He began with Geiler (v.) and Christoph von Utenheim a retired life in monastic solitude, devoted only to study and contemplation; but he gave this up to teach rhetoric at Heidelberg (1498-1500). Controversies with Murner (1502) and with J. Locher (1506), as well as his struggle against ecclesiastical abuses, did not allow him peaceful work. After occasional stays in Freiburg in Br. and Heidelberg, he settled in 1511 at Strasbourg, where he directed a humanistic association. In 1515 he returned to Schlettstadt. His decline was saddened by illness, the disorders of the “Reformation,” and the Peasants’ War.
W. was a follower of the “Devotio moderna” (v.), from which he derived his moderate nominalism and his pro-humanistic outlook. His versatility and his continual controversies prevented him from carrying on an organic activity. Pedagogical tasks were central to his work. He composed occasional humanistic poems in which he expressed his devotion to Mary and his loyalty to the Emperor, a didactic manual in verse (1477), academic discourses in which he insisted on constancy and harmony as the foundations of education (1478), and the comedy Stylpho (1480), in which a pseudo-scientific charlatan is unmasked. His masterpieces are Agatharchia (1498), a treatise for princes on the right conduct of government, and Germania (1501), in which he develops a complete plan for a higher school at Strasbourg. A good contribution to historical studies is his Epitoma rerum Germanicarum (1501). His program of religious reform moves within the framework of ideas which the great councils had failed to impose universally.