Konrad Celtis

Celtis, Konrad, (also Konrad Celtes), adopted name of Konrad Bickel (or Konrad Pickel) (Wipfeld nr. Würzburg, 1459-1508, Vienna), one of the most gifted of the German humanists. Brilliant, energetic, and restless, Celtis spent several years as a wandering scholar, studying at Cologne, Heidelberg, and Erfurt, visiting Italy, Poland, and Hungary. In his mature years he founded learned societies at his various places of call, such as the Sodalitas vistulana in Cracow, Sodalitas literaria Hungarorum, and the Sodalitas Rhenana. The most famous of these was the Sodalitas danubiana in Vienna, a forerunner of later academies. In 1494 Celtis was a professor at Ingolstadt, and in 1496 in Vienna, where he enjoyed the favour of the Emperor Maximilian I, who inaugurated for him a special faculty or ‘Collegium’. He discovered and published in 1501 the plays of the 10th-c. nun Roswitha of Gandersheim and planned a survey of Germany, of which he wrote the section concerning Nuremberg (De origine, situ et institutis Norimbergae libellus, 1502). He wrote entirely in Latin, and his works include vivid erotic poems (Amores, 1502), which have often been interpreted as autobiographical. The Peutingersche Tafel was discovered by him and bequeathed to Konrad Peutinger.