WIMPFELING, JAKOB. — Alsatian humanist and theologian, born in Schlettstadt on 25 June 1450, died there on 15 November 1528. He attended the school of the Brethren of the Common Life in his homeland. After the premature death of his father, a saddler, W. began his studies at the Faculty of Arts at Freiburg in Br. (1464).
He completed his theological studies at Erfurt (1468) and Heidelberg (1470). While he was cathedral preacher at Speyer (1483–1496), he prepared himself for greater scholarly tasks. He began, Geiler (v.) and Christoph von Utenheim, a secluded life in a monastic retreat, devoted solely to study and contemplation; but he abandoned it in order to teach rhetoric at Heidelberg (1498–1500). Controversies with Murner (1502) and J. Locher (1506), as well as his struggle against ecclesiastical abuses, prevented him from working in peace. After intermittent stays in Freiburg in Br. and Heidelberg, he settled in Strasbourg in 1511, where he directed a humanist association. In 1515 he returned to Schlettstadt. His declining years were saddened by illness, the disorders of the «Reformation», and the Peasants’ War.
W. was a follower of the «Devotio moderna» (v.), from which he drew his moderate, pro-humanist nominalism. His versatility and his prolonged controversies prevented him from engaging in systematic activity. Educational tasks lay at the center of his work. He composed occasional humanist poems, in which he expressed his devotion to Mary and his loyalty to the Emperor; a didactic manual in verse (1477); academic speeches in which he demanded 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 good government, and Germania (1501), in which he develops the complete plan for a higher school in Strasbourg. His Epitoma rerum Germanicarum (1501) made a valuable contribution to historical studies. His program of religious reform followed the line of ideas that the great councils had failed to impose universally.