Christoph Scheurl

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Lucas Cranach the Elder : Portrait of Christoph Scheurl at the age of 28, dated 1509, Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg

Christoph (II.) Scheurl (born November 11, 1481 in Nuremberg ; † June 14, 1542 ibid) was a German lawyer and canon lawyer , diplomat and humanist . From 1507 to 1511 he was professor and rector of the University of Wittenberg , then councilor for the imperial city of Nuremberg .

Life

Albrecht Dürer : The coat of arms of Scheurl and Tucher , alliance coat of arms of Scheurl's parents, made for him as a copper engraving around 1512

Christoph was born as the son of the merchant and member of the Great Council, who immigrated from Breslau to Nuremberg, Christoph (I.) Scheurl (1457–1519) and his wife Helena (née Tucher from the Nuremberg patriciate ). The father built up a large, Europe-wide trading company and was also involved as a coal and steel entrepreneur. The family lived in the house acquired in 1485 at Burgstrasse 10, below the Imperial Castle . In 1491 King Maximilian was entertained in Scheurl's house.

Scheurl initially received a careful upbringing from private teachers in his parents' house. He was a private student of the Coburg “arithmetic master” Leonhard Vogel. Intended to study law, he moved to the University of Heidelberg in March 1496 and moved to the University of Bologna two years later . There humanism had a decisive influence on its development. In Rome he also received the ordination as a cleric (probably as Ostiarius , the lowest of the four minor orders ). His studies were made difficult by the fact that his father lost a large part of his fortune in 1500. Supported by the Tuchers, his relatives on his mother's side, he was able to continue his studies and obtain a doctorate in canonical and secular law on December 23, 1506 .

With the support of Johann von Staupitz , Scheurl was referred to the Elector Friedrich the Wise , who engaged him as a professor at the University of Wittenberg in the spring of 1507 . Scheurl started his lectures on April 13, 1507 and taught canon law and the Humanas Literas ; on May 1st of the same year he took over the rectorate of the academy. He acquired an extensive library. In his endeavor to raise the level of the university, he drafted new statutes based on the model of the university in Bologna. His efforts bore fruit and attracted more humanistic teachers to Wittenberg, which was also associated with an increase in interested students. In September 1511 Staupitz also brought his student Martin Luther as a doctoral student to the university headed by Scheurl.

In 1508 he was appointed ducal Saxon councilor and assessor of the ducal Saxon court in Leipzig and Altenburg. Although Elector Friedrich the Wise would have liked to keep him in Wittenberg, Scheurl followed a call to Nuremberg in December 1511, where he was sworn in as a councilor on April 5, 1512. As such, he was active in diplomatic missions on behalf of the Nuremberg Council. In 1519 he traveled to Aragon to bring the newly elected King Charles V the city of Nuremberg's best wishes. In 1519 he switched to lay status and married Katharina Fütterer , who came from a well-known large merchant family that had belonged to the Nuremberg patriciate since 1501 . In 1522 he was one of the ambassadors who negotiated with Archduke Ferdinand about aid to the Turks in Vienna. In 1523 he was again at the imperial court because of the Nuremberg complaints against the imperial farewell .

Scheurl achieved importance in the history of the Reformation through the mediation between Johannes Eck and Martin Luther and the sending of Luther's 95 theses to various colleagues. At first Scheurl did not reject the Reformation fundamentally; in particular, in the Nuremberg Religious Discussion he led in 1525, he sided with the evangelical preachers. He maintained a lively correspondence with the reformers, especially with Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon , as well as with the Catholic side, e. B. to Johannes Eck and Abbess Caritas Pirckheimer , as well as to humanists like their brother Willibald Pirckheimer or Konrad Peutinger . His position between the religious parties earned him the accusation of hypocrisy and duplicity from Melanchthon and other reformers, but also from Pirckheimer. After the dispute with Melanchthon, Scheurl broke off his contacts with the reformers and, after the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, finally switched to the side of Catholic humanism.

In addition to his letters, Scheurl left behind a diverse body of historical, theological and autobiographical texts. Translations, anthologies and numerous speeches by him have also survived.

Works (selection)

  • De rebus gestis Alberti Ducis Saxioniae
  • De Vita Ant. Cressenis
  • Tractatus de sacerdorum & ecclesiasticarum rerum praestantia, Leipzig 1511
  • Lib. De laudibus Germaniae & Ducum Saxoniae, Leipzig 1508
  • Epist. Ad Charit. Pirckhameram, Nuremberg 1513 (letter to Caritas Pirckheimer )
  • Epist. Ad Charit. Pirckhameram, Nuremberg 1513
  • Epist. Ad Staupitium de statu sive regimine reipubl. Noricae
  • Epist. Ad Petr. Amber, 1580

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Christoph Scheurl  - Sources and full texts
  • Christoph Scheurl in: Marburg Repertory on Translation Literature in Early German Humanism

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stumpf, Christoph A., "Scheurl, Christoph" in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 22 (2005), pp. 715–716

See also