WIMPFELING, JAKOB. - Alsatian humanist and theologian, b. at Schlettstadt on 25 June 1450, d. there on 15 Nov. 1528. He attended the school of the Brethren of the Common Life in his native town. After the premature death of his father, a saddler, W. began his studies at the Faculty of Arts in Fribourg in Br. (1464).
He completed his theological studies at Erfurt (1468) and Heidelberg (1470). While he was preacher at the cathedral in Speyer (1483-1496) he prepared himself for greater scholarly tasks. With Geiler (v.) and Christoph von Utenheim he began, in monastic solitude, a retired life devoted solely to study and contemplation; but he gave this up in order to teach rhetoric at Heidelberg (1498-1500). Controversies with Murner (1502) and with J. Locher (1506), like his struggle against ecclesiastical abuses, did not allow him a tranquil work. After sporadic stays in Fribourg in Br. and Heidelberg, he settled in 1511 in Strasbourg, where he directed a humanistic association. In 1515 he returned to Schlettstadt. His decline was saddened by illness, by the disorders of the "Reformation" and by the Peasants' War.
W. was a follower of the "Devotio moderna" (v.), from which he drew his moderate, humanistically inclined nominalism. His versatility and his continual controversies prevented an organic activity. Pedagogical tasks were at the center of his work. He composed humanistic occasional 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 demands constancy and harmony as foundations of education (1478), the comedy Stylpho (1480) in which a pseudo-scientific charlatan is unmasked. His masterpieces are Agatharchia (1498), a treatise for princes on right government, and Germania (1501), where he develops the complete plan for a higher school in Strasbourg. A good contribution to historical studies is his Epitoma rerum Germanicarum (1501). His program of religious reform moves along the track of the ideas that the great councils had not succeeded in imposing universally.
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Riccardo Newald