Konrad Pellikan

Konrad Pellikan

Konrad Pellikan , humanist Latinized name of Konrad Kürschner , also Konrad Pelikan, Konrad Kürsner, Conrad Pellikan (us), Conrad Kürsner, Conrad (us) Pellican (us), Konrad Pellican, (born  January 9, 1478 in Rufach , Alsace; † April 5, 1556 in Zurich ) was a Swiss scholar, Franciscan and humanist ; Reformed theologian and reformer in Zurich since 1525 and pioneer of libraries.

Life

Konrad was born in Rufach (Rouffach) in Alsace in 1478 into a furrier family. While studying in Heidelberg in 1491, he did not Latinize the surname Kürsner to “Pellifex”, which his uncle Jodocus Gallus (Jost Hahn, around 1459–1517, then rector of Heidelberg University ) found too clumsy, but to “Pellicanus” with the addition "Rubeaquensis" (from Rufach). Pellikan struggled to study because his parents' financial circumstances were very poor. He was only able to come to Heidelberg in 1491, but his uncle was only able to entertain him there for a short time. So he had no choice but to go to the monastery.

Due to lack of resources, he entered the Rufach Franciscan monastery in 1493 , which belonged to the Franciscan Province of Strasbourg , and after three years came to the Tübingen Monastery , where he attended lectures on philosophy. In addition to his studies, he acquired knowledge of astronomy and learned the Hebrew language as an autodidact . Johannes Reuchlin supported his efforts to create a Hebrew dictionary that was published by Gregor Reisch in his work Margarita Philosophica by Johannes Grüninger in Strasbourg in 1504 without his knowledge and without naming him . In the meantime he had become a lecturer and later a guardian in the Franciscan monastery in Basel. Here he also worked as a publisher and editor for the Basel printers and produced indexes of names and subjects for editions of the church fathers . He came into contact with Martin Luther's first printed writings , which he provided with reform-friendly comments for reprint by Basel printers. From 1511 to 1514 he also worked as a Guardian in Pforzheim . In the Franciscan monastery of St. Wolfgang in Riedfeld near Neustadt an der Aisch , where he had traveled with his provincial, he was introduced to the Hebrew language and literature by the Jewish scholar Elias Levita in 1514. After the publication of Luther's New Testament in German by the printer Adam Petri in 1522, Pellikan was relieved of his monastery office in 1523, but brought to the University of Basel as a professor of theology and turned to the Reformation, unlike his friend Erasmus of Rotterdam .

In 1525 he was called to Zurich to teach the Hebrew language at the « Prophezei », the reformed college for the training of preachers. When he took office in 1526, he took off the monk's robe and married. Until his death he worked in Zurich, where he provided important services at the reformed university for the training of preachers, as a Bible translator and clarifier. His Bible work Commentaria bibliorum is the only complete Bible work of the Reformation period. As a writer, editor and publisher he worked for the Zurich printer Christoph Froschauer .

After the book storm in 1525 and Zwingli's death in 1531, Pellikan, on the initiative of Heinrich Bullinger , was given the task of re-establishing the monastery library at the Grossmünster as a study library for professors and students of the «Prophezei». The founding holdings were the books still in existence in the medieval monastery library, as well as the private library purchased by Ulrich Zwingli's widow in 1532, containing around 460 volumes with around 600 works. In the course of time, further holdings of medieval libraries from institutions and private individuals have accumulated here. From 1532 to 1551, Pellikan reorganized the library in the old rooms of the monastery building, arranged the books in the racks with their backs to the reader as an innovation, for which the signature was applied to the foot of the back, and made an inventory of them. In a handwritten catalog, he made this inventory accessible by means of author and subject indexes according to keywords and a system. This four-fold catalog in volume form has survived in the original (Zurich Central Library, Manuscript Department, Ms. Car. XII 4), as well as approx. 75% of the works it contains (manuscripts, incunabula and early prints). He transferred the techniques of registering , which he had developed during his editorial work, to the cataloging of book collections, and he was also the inventor of working with bibliographical slips of paper , a method that his student Conrad Gessner later used for his bibliographical work.

He enjoyed an undivided reputation in humanist circles. Since he was a close friend of Ulrich Zwingli, he explained that he distanced himself from Martin Luther and took sides against his doctrine of the Lord's Supper by letter . It is uncertain whether he entered the imperial doctrine of the Lord's Supper in the Latin translation of Johannes Bugenhagen's Psalter by Martin Bucer .

Pellikan died on Easter 1556, and he was mourned by the whole city. The Italian reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli succeeded him at the theological school, the Collegium Carolinum.

family

Konrad Pellikan's sister Elisabeth was the mother of the humanist Conrad Lycosthenes (1518–1561). The humanist Jodocus Gallus (Jost Hahn, around 1459–1517) was his uncle. Pellikan married Anna Fries in 1526, a country girl, whose brother Johannes Fries (1505–1565, later Latinist) lived with him as a table-goer. With her he had a son, Samuel (1527–1564) and a daughter Elisabeth, born in 1528, who died young.

Works

• Conrad Pellikan: autobiography under the title Chronicon , original (autograph) in the Zurich Central Library, manuscript department, Ms. A 138; Edition: Chronicon Conradi Pellicani Rubeaquensis ad filium et nepotes 1544 , ed. Bernhard Riggenbach ; Basel 1877.
  • German: The house chronicle of Conrad Pellikan von Ruffach, a life picture from the Reformation period , German by Theodor Vulpinus (Théodore Renaud); Strasbourg 1892.
  • English: The Chronicle of Conrad Pellican , translated from the Latin ms. (Central Library Zurich A 138) and provided with an introduction and notes by Frederick Christian Ahrens; UMI microfilm edition, Ann Arbor MI 1996, Diss. Columbia Univ. 1950.
• Conrad Pellikan: Commentaria bibliorum . Christoph Froschauer, Zurich 1532–1539, in 2 °, 7 volumes with index volume.

Web links

Commons : Konrad Pellikan  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

literature

• Hans Ulrich Bächtold: Pellikan, Konrad. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Bernhard Riggenbach:  Pellican, Konrad . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 25, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1887, pp. 334-338.
• Real Encyclopedia for Protestant Theology and Church . Volume 15, p. 108.
• Erich Wenneker:  Pellikan, Konrad. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 7, Bautz, Herzberg 1994, ISBN 3-88309-048-4 , Sp. 180-183.
• Bernhard Riggenbach: The Chronicon of the KP Basel 1877.
• Theodor Vulpinus: Konrad Pellikan's house chronicle. Strasbourg 1892.
• Eduard Reuss: Konrad Pellikan. Strasbourg 1892.
• Eberhard Nestle: Nigri, Böhme and Pellikan. Tübingen 1893.
• Emil Silberstein: Conrad Pellicanus. A contribution to the history of the study of the Hebrew language in the first half of the XVI. Century. Berlin 1900.
• Wilhelm Gussmann: Sources and research on the history of the Augsburg Confession. Volume 1.1, Leipzig 1911.
• Christoph Zürcher: Konrad Pellikan's work in Zurich 1526–1556 (= Zurich contributions to the history of the Reformation. Volume 4). TVZ, Zurich 1975, ISBN 3-290-14604-9 .
• Brigitte Degler-Spengler : Konrad Pellikan. In: Helvetia sacra . Dept. 5: The Order of St. Francis. Francke, Bern 1978, 2 volumes in 3 parts, Vol. 1, pp. 133-135.
• Alfredo Serrai: Bibliografia e cabala, contributo alla storia della bibliografia. In: Il bibliotecario. No. 6, Rome 1985, pp. 25-60.
• Hans Rudolf Guggisberg : Pellicanus. In: Contemporaries of Erasmus, a biographical register of the Renaissance and Reformation. Ed. Peter G. Bietenholz, Th. B. Deutscher, Toronto 1985-1987, 3 volumes, volume 3, pp. 65-66.
• Martin Germann: The Reformed Abbey Library at the Großmünster Zurich in the 16th century and the beginnings of modern bibliography: Reconstruction of the book inventory and its origin, the book layout and the library room, with an edition of the library catalog from 1532/1551 by Conrad Pellikan (= contributions to the book- and librarianship. 34). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1994, ISBN 3-447-03482-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Max Döllner : History of the development of the city of Neustadt an der Aisch until 1933. Ph. CW Schmidt, Neustadt an der Aisch 1950; Reprinted ibid 1978, pp. 58, 96 and 167.
2. ↑ Martin Germann: The Reformed Abbey Library at the Großmünster Zurich in the 16th century and the beginnings of the modern bibliography: Reconstruction of the book inventory and its origin, the book layout and the library room, with an edition of the library catalog from 1532/1551 by Conrad Pellikan . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1994 ( contributions to books and libraries ; 34), ISBN 3-447-03482-3
3. ↑ Pellikan's pupil Conrad Gessner describes working with bibliographical notes in detail in 1548, cf. Markus Krajewski: Paper management, the birth of the card index from the spirit of the library . Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin 2002 (Copyrights; 4), pp. 16–22.
4. ↑ Rudolf Pfister : For the sake of faith. The Protestant refugees from Locarno and their admission to Zurich in 1555. Evangelischer Verlag Zollikon 1955, p. 129.