Caspar Ursinus Velius

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Title page: Poematum libri quinque (1522)

Caspar Ursinus Velius (* around 1493 in Schweidnitz , Principality of Schweidnitz ; † March 5, 1539 in Vienna ) was a humanist , poet, imperial court historian and educator.

Life

Ursinus had a brother named Conrad, who later lived in Wiener Neustadt and later became the progenitor of the Prussian noble family Ursin von Baer . Ursinus studied from 1505 at the University of Krakow , the humanities and Greek . Already at the age of fifteen he wrote poems in Latin and was noticed by the Breslau bishop Johann V. Thurzo . This brought him into his environment and supported him financially. In 1508 Ursinus moved to the University of Leipzig , where he taught Greek. Around 1510 he became secretary of the bishop of Gurk Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg . Together with this he went to Italy for the first time in 1511. Since then he has also called himself Velius. He studied in Bologna and Rome, where he got to know the poets' circle of the sodalitas Coritiana . He was particularly closely associated with the historian Paulus Jovius . In Rome he wrote two heroic poems about two battles.

In 1514 he returned to Germany and re-entered the service of Bishop Lang. With this he took part in the meeting of princes in Pressburg in 1515. Ursinus lived in Vienna for about a year and had connections with the university there and with the sodalitas Collimitiana . In 1517 he was awarded the poet's laurel by Emperor Maximilian I. In the same year he published the collection of poems "Epistolarum et Epigrammatum liber". In 1518 he received a canon office in Breslau from his sponsor Johann V. Thurzo . There he met the theologian Valentin Krautwald , whom he had probably already met while studying in Kraków. The canonical enabled him to continue his studies in Vienna. From there he fled from the plague to Basel in 1521 , where he met Erasmus von Rotterdam . In Freiburg im Breisgau he came into contact with Ulrich Zasius . In 1522 he published a complete edition of his poems in Basel and returned to Vienna a short time later.

Among other things, because of the advance of the Reformation but also the internal decline of the university there, he went back to Italy. There he turned decisively against the Reformation and warned against the spread of Lutheran teaching.

After Emperor Ferdinand I began reforming the University of Vienna, Ursinus was offered the chair for rhetoric. He did not return until 1524 and gave lectures on Roman and Greek authors. Most recently he taught Roman law. In the winter of 1525/26 he was in the oven and there, too, found contact with literary circles. Archbishop László Szalkai (* around 1475, † 1526) took him into his family. After the battle of Mohács in 1526 and Ferdinand I's claim to the Kingdom of Hungary , Ursinus became the imperial court historian. At Ferdinand's coronation in Stuhlweissenburg , he gave the ceremonial speech.

In 1529 he gave up his clergy and married in Vienna on the day the first Ottoman siege of the city began. He was able to flee to Linz and returned to Vienna after the siege to take part in the reform of the university. In 1530 he took part in the Reichstag in Augsburg. When Ferdinand was crowned Roman-German King in 1531 , Ursinius again gave the ceremonial address. In the same year he became the educator of Ferdinand's children. The circumstances of his death in 1539 are unclear. He drowned in the Danube and may have committed suicide.

plant

The anthology of his poems, published in 1522, contains occasional poems on family events in the House of Habsburg , the King of Poland and high-ranking patrons. Noteworthy is a birthday poem for Erasmus of Rotterdam. There are also occasional poems about the life of a poet in Rome or friendships in Vienna. His epigrams contain love poems and show his relationship to the visual arts, for example through the mention of Albrecht Dürer or Lucas Cranach . Other forms of poetry were included in the complete edition. Only small parts are religiously shaped. This includes a long poem in hexameters for the glorification of Our Lady .

After 1522 his offices became more important than poetry. In 1524 he published a collection of his epigrams. This also includes a description of the Laocoon group in Rome. As an opponent of the Reformation, he wrote an ode to Pope Hadrian VI in 1523 . In 1527 he published an epigram to the emperor that was directed against the Anabaptists. He wrote about the Battle of Pavia in 1525 and complained in a poem about the Turkish threat in 1530/32. As a historiographer he published the collection Monosticha regnum Italiae etc in 1528 as well as distiches on Roman emperors.

A work on the battle of Mohács written by him that year has not survived. His main work is a story about Emperor Ferdinand I. The writing remained unfinished and ends in 1531.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Theologische Realenzyklopädie , Volume 34, edited by Gerhard Müller, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002, p. 445
  2. ↑ Manfred P. Fleischer: The Silesian late humanism. In: Source book on the history of the Protestant Church in Silesia Munich, 1992 p. 58.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Velius, Caspar Ursinus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Humanist, poet, historiographer
DATE OF BIRTH around 1493
PLACE OF BIRTH Schweidnitz , Principality of Schweidnitz
DATE OF DEATH March 5, 1539
Place of death Vienna