Lorenz Beheim

Lorenz Beheim (also Behaim ; born April 3, 1458 in Nuremberg ; † April 11, 1521 in Bamberg ) was a German humanist , astrologer , physician and alchemist and close friends with Willibald Pirckheimer and Albrecht Dürer .

Life

Beheim came from a Nuremberg gun and bell foundry family , but not the same-named advisable family. He was the son of Lorenz Beheim of the same name († 1494), a gun founder and basin beater, and Elsbeth Negwein, daughter of a family of craftsmen from Nuremberg. His brother Georg was a university teacher and later provost of St. Lorenz in Nuremberg .

Beheim studied in Ingolstadt from 1473 to 1476 theology and then moved from 1476 to 1478 to Leipzig , where he received his Master of Arts made. In 1490 he went to Italy, where he did his Dr. Decretorum and entered the service of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgias as his steward . After Borgia's election as Pope in 1492, Beheim was also his Praefectus Machinarium (Supreme Gunnery) - in this role, as a fortress builder, he headed the papal gun system and also took part in several sieges. Cesare Borgia , the son of Pope Alexander VI, for whom Beheim also created his horoscope , sent him a catalog of questions about war technology , defense, poisons and many other things, but Beheim's answers have unfortunately not been received. There is also a manuscript about the pills Alexander VI. in Pirckheimer's estate , which certainly comes from Beheim.

He left a whole collection of Roman inscriptions to the research of antiquity. Since he was an avid collector of such inscriptions, it is thanks to Beheim that science can get an idea of a now lost fresco cycle by Pinturicchio , whose inscriptions he also copied.

After more than 20 years in Italy, Beheim finally returned to his home country and Nuremberg in 1503 . From 1505 he was canon of the collegiate monastery St. Stephan in Bamberg. In 1506 and 1507 he also worked there as a lawyer .

He maintained a close friendship with Willibald Pirckheimer , whom he probably met in Rome in 1495, and was described by him as the most learned man he knew. The two scholars exchanged lively letters. Pirckheimer's answers are lost today, but Beheim's letters have been preserved and give an insight into the relationship between him, Pirckheimer and their mutual friend Albrecht Dürer , whose beard Beheim repeatedly makes fun of. "As far as our Albrecht is concerned, I don't think that he needs much pleading ... Only his mustache, which he certainly twists and curls every day, prevents him from sticking out like boar teeth." Beheim also made horoscopes for Dürer and Pirckheimer .

literature

• Rochus von Liliencron :  Behaim, Lorenz . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 276.
• Christa Schaper: The Beheim. A gun u. Bell founders family in Nuremberg, 1350 - 1600 Verein f. Business d. City of Nuremberg, 1962
• Helga Scheible: Willibald Pirckheimer's correspondence volumes 1–7, CH Beck, Munich 1989–2009

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The time of birth is in a horoscope collection of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 27003, fol. 27ve, handed down with 17 hours and 2 minutes after [noon] April 2, 1458.
2. ↑ Hans Rupprich : The German literature from the late Middle Ages to the Baroque, part 1, volume 4, p. 513f
3. ↑ See ADB, afterwards he comes from a middle-class Nuremberg family, not the patrician family Behaim von Schwarzbach auf Kirchensittenbach .
4. ^ Announcements of the Association for the History of the City of Nuremberg, Volume 77, p. 273
5. ↑ Kurt Pilz:  Behaim, Lorenz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 749 ( digitized version ).
6. ↑ competition, friendship and Memoria Albrecht Durer and Wilibald Pirckheimer By Mathias Kirchhoff in bringing texts to speak: philology and Interpretation , edited by Christiane Ackermann and Ulrich Barton, Walter de Gruyter, June 5th 2009, 502 pages