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The Philosophy of Conrad Celtis, German Arch-Humanist1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Lewis W. Spitz
Lewis W. Spitz*
Affiliation:
University of Missouri
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Extract

Mortuus ille quidem sed longum vivus in aevum

Colloquitur doctis per sua scripta viris

—Epitaphium Celtis ab ipso compositum

If mental discipline and capacity for sustained thought are essential attributes of a formal philosopher, then Conrad Celtis, whom D. F. Strauss christened “the German arch-humanist,” was far from being one. On the big questions Celtis' thinking was protean and inconclusive. He showed a grand indifference to the need for consistency. In a remarkable way he combined Platonic mysticism with an Aristotelian view of nature. He savagely attacked the church, its clergy, and dogma, yet performed his religious duties as though no trace of doubt marred the serenity of a simple faith. He lead an openly immoral life, if not so successfully as he boasted, and at the end turned to the comforts of a pious death. In a very real way these contradictions were not his alone, but less obviously those of his whole generation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 1 , 1954 , pp. 22 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1954

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Footnotes

1

This study was read in substance to the South-Central Renaissance Conference at Fayetteville, Arkansas, May 7-8, 1954. I wish to thank Dr. Myron P. Gilmore and Dr. Charles F. Mullett for a number of valuable suggestions.

References

2 Not equal to Erasmus in stature, to Reuchlin in scholarship, nor to Hutten in notoriety, Celtis was nevertheless a key figure in the humanist movement. The first German poet laureate, he was the inspiration behind many literary and historical projects, a would-be reformer of university education, a playwright, poet, patriot, philosopher, and a leader of the humanist sodalities. Klüpfel, Engelbert, De Vita et Scriptis Conradi Celtis Protucii Praecipui Renascentium in Germania Literarum Restauratoris Primique Germanorum Poetae Laureati, 2 vols. (Freiburg i. B., 1827)Google Scholar, with its many errors remains the most comprehensive biographical study. An excellent analysis of his personality and cultural ideals deserves special mention, von Bezold, Friedrich, “Konrad Celtis, der deutsche Erzhumanist,” Historische Zeitschrift, XLIX (1883), 1–45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, republished in Aus Mittelalter und Renaissance (Munich, 1918). Cf. also Moth, Friedrich, Conradus Celtis Protucius: Tysklands förste laurbaerkronede Digter (Copenhagen, 1898)Google Scholar, a Danish dissertation, and two more recent publications, Drewing, Harald, Vier Gestalten aus dem Zeitalter des Humanismus (St. Gallen, 1946)Google Scholar, and Forster, Leonard, Selections from Conrad Celtis, 1459-1508 (Cambridge, Eng., 1948)Google Scholar, the first book in English on Celtis.

3 Libri odarum quatuor cum Epodo et saeculari carmine (Strasbourg, 1513), I, 13, hereafter cited as Ode with the book and ode number following. The modern edition of the odes is Libri Odarum Quattuor. Liber Epodon. Carmen Saeculare (Leipzig, 1937), ed. F. Pindter, in the series, “Bibliotheca Scriptorum medii Recentisque Aevorum, Saecula XV-XVI,” ed. Ladislaus Juhasz.

4 Quatuor libri amorvm (Nuremberg, 1502), I, 4, lines 17 f., lines 27 f., hereafter cited as Am. with the book and poem number following. The modern edition of the Amores is the Quattuor Libri Amorum secundum quattuor latera Germaniae (Leipzig, 1934), ed. F. Pindter, in the “Bibliotheca Scriptorum” series. In a letter of 1500 (Der Briejwechsel des Konrad Celtis [Munich, 1934], ed. Hans Rupprich, Br. 254, p. 431), Peter Danhauser thanks Celtis for instruction in philosophy. The Briejwechsel will hereafter be cited as Br., with the letter number and page number following. Much of the correspondence is extant in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Codex 3448, Epistolae et carmina sodalitatis litterariae, ab anno 1491 ad annum 1505. The verse accompanying Dürer's woodcut Philosophia in the Amores suggests this broad scope of philosophy.

5 Br. 11, pp. 20 ff., lines 49 f.; Od II, 12, lines 45 ff.

6 Albrecht von Eyb had included excerpts from Apuleius in his extremely popular source book of the classics, Margarita Poetica, which appeared in fifteen or more editions between 1472 and 1503. Cf. Hermann, Max, Albrecht von Eyb und die Frühzeit des deutschen Humanismus (Berlin, 1893), 190, 214.Google Scholar

7 Schmidt, Charles, Histoire Litteraire de d'Alsace à la Fin du XVe et au commencement du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1879), I, 258 f.Google Scholar

8 “Rerum cognoscere causas“; Ode I, 27, line 78, etc.

9 Ficinus, Marsilius, Opera (Basel, 1576), I, 659 Google Scholar, “Epistolarum Liber I”; I, 978, “Liber de lvmine.” Cf. also I, 529, “Liber de uita ccelitus comparanda,” and many other treatises for this theory. Cf. Bezold, F., Aus Mittelalter und Renaissance, 129.Google Scholar

10 “De radiis praesensionariis, quos philosophi stellicos vocant, et quam potentes humani affectus sint”; Am. I, 11., lines 49 ff. “Quid graves mentis mihi fers labores, / Musa, tam caecas repetendo causas? / Fine quo tandem fluidi fatiscant / Semina mundi, / Fine quo tandem radiosa caeli / Astra decurrant varios, agentes / Circulis orbes, etc.”; Ode I, 29, lines 1 ff. Cf. also the Proseuticum ad diuum Fridericum tercium pro laurea Appollinari (Nuremberg, 1487).

11 “Sive ingens animal, totum quod dicimus orbem, / Spiramenta suis faucibus ilia vomit”; Am. IV, 14, lines 29 f.

12 Norimberga, Chap. 6, published with Quatuor libri amorvm (1502) and in a modern edition by Werminghoff, Albert, Conrad Celtis und sein Buck über Nürnberg (Freiburg i. B., 1921).Google Scholar

13 Hartfelder, Karl, ed., Fünf Bücher Epigramme von Konrad Celtes (Berlin, 1881), II, 35 Google Scholar, hereafter cited as Ep., with the book and epigram number following.

14 Ode II, 11, lines 45 ff. The planets were “the seven rulers of mankind” (De horis et diebus planetariis); Ep. III, 70-76. Cf. Ep. IV, 78; Ep. IV, 66.

15 “De operatione siderum”; Ep. II, 34.

16 Ode I, 17, line 43.

17 One of the few references to Saturn is little more than an aside, Ep. III, 7: Ad Saturnum. Cf. Panofsky, Erwin, Albrecht Dürer (Princeton, 1948), I, 157.Google Scholar On the connection between medieval platonism, the ideas of sympathetic bonds and the light metaphysic, and astrology, cf. Baeumker, Clemens, “Mittelalterlicher und Renaissance-Platonismus,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Renaissance und Reformation (Munich, 1917), 5 ff.Google Scholar

18 “Ad astrologos,” Ep. IV, 64. Cf. “De mendaciis astrologorum,” Ep. I, 59; “De imperito astrologo,” Ep. I, 60; “De cane, gallo et culina: astrologis,” Ep. IV, 7.

19 “De exclusione; necromanticas et magicas artes commemorat”; Am. I, 14. Cf. Am. IV, 10, lines 28 ff.

20 “Ad Andream Pegasum de fato et felicitate”; Ode I, 5.

21 Ode I, 11, lines 69 ff.

22 Ode II, 22, lines 45 ff.

23 “In Fortunae vultum ex sententia philosophorum”; Ep. IV, 16. In Ode III, 1, lines 77 f., virtue opposes fortune; in Epod 9, lines 23 f., fortune through various perils makes a way to virtue. The Liber Epodon was published with the Odes.

24 Ode II, 2, lines 77 ff

25 Ode II, 14.

26 “Ad Jovem optimum maximum”; Ep. I, 6.

27 Am. III, 10, lines 49 ff.

28 Oratio inauguralis, sentence 79, published with the Panegyris ad Duces Bauarie (Augsburg, 1492), as well as in a modern edition by Rupprich, Hans, Conradus Celtis Protucius Oratio (Leipzig, 1932)Google Scholar, in the “Bibliotheca Scriptorum” series. The Oratio is included with the text and translation in L. Forster, op. cit., 36 ff. In Br. 32, p. 56, lines 11 f., Celtis complains of the bad Latin of the clamoring scholastics. Gregor Nitsch, a humanist canon at the cathedral of Olmütz, observes that poets and theologians have been at odds also in preceding centuries (Br. 251, p . 424, lines 39 ff.).

29 Vita, Br. 339, pp. 609 ff., lines 132 f., Scripsit Parnasum bicipitem, in quo poetas et theologos concordat (Br. 110, pp. 184 ff.), may be a reference to this work.

30 Br. 79, pp. 131 f.; lines 26 f.; “Ad Germanos,” Ep. II, 2. In Ep. V, 5, Celtis repeats the fiction of the papess Joan. In Br. 313, p. 566, Augustinus Moravus asks the suppression of his anecdotes on the pope.

31 Ep. IV, 17.

32 Ode III, 15, lines 29 ff.; Ep. IV, 23; Am. III, 9, lines 47 ff.

33 Am. III, 9.

34 Br. 2, p. 4, line 43; Ep. I, 6; Ep. I, 19, etc.

35 Ode IV, 9; Br. 3, p. 7, lines 26 ff.; Am. IV, 3, lines 60 ff.; Ep. V, 40.

36 Ode I, 16.

37 Ode I, 19.

38 Am. IV, 4, lines 89 ff.

39 Ode I, 5, lines 137 ff.

40 Br. 275, pp. 494 ff., lines 121 ff. Br. 101, pp. 165 ff., line 22.

41 Am. III, 12, lines 53-62; Ode III, 15.

42 Ode IV, 6, lines 15-18; Am. IV, 3, lines 60 ff.; Am. IV, 4, lines 57 ff.

43 Ep. II, 38; Ep. I, 6; Ode I, 29, lines 13 ff.

44 Ode III, 6, lines 57 ff.; Ode IV, 2, lines 3 ff., 41 ff.; Epod 7, lines 31 ff.; Ep. V, 60; Ars versificandi et carminum (Leipzig, 1487), “Ad lectorem.”

45 Ode I, 11, lines 73 ff. Ode I, 23, lines 39 f.

46 Am. IV, 15, lines 39 f.

47 Ode III, 1, lines 85 ff.

48 Ode II, 22, lines 33 ff.

49 Ode II, 23, lines 97 ff. Ode I, 20; Am. I, 6, line 50; Ep. I, 6, etc.

50 Epod 13.

51 Br. 5, p. 10, 77; Br. 306, pp. 552 ff., lines 13 f.; Epod 14; Br. 305, pp. 549 ff.; Br. 210, pp. 348 ff.

52 Br. 312, pp. 564 ff.

53 Ep. I, 20, 21; Ep. III, 24; Ep. V, 19; Br. 325, p. 581, lines 2 ff. Clm codex 782: Ad divinam Catherinam; Ad divam Virginem.

54 Ep. I, 19; Ep. II, 37; Ep. III, 1; Ep. V, 14; Ode II, 8. Clm codex 6007 or Ebersberg 2071, p. 112; “Chunradus Celtes, laureatus poeta sic dicit de beata Maria virgine in carmine suo saphico,” in Leitschuh, Franz, Studien und Quellen zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte des XV.-XVI. Jahrhunderts (Fribourg, 1912), 145.Google Scholar Ars versificandi, 46.

55 Am. III, 13, lines 7 ff. “De tumba divae Valpurgis in Aichstodio …”; Ode II, 30.

56 “In aede divae genitricis …”; Ep. V, 4; Ep. IV, 36, 37. In December, 1502, Celtis visited Alt-Oetting, where he was met by Aventine, and taken to the latter's home in Abensberg on December 7; Turmair, Johannes (Aventinus), Sämmtliche Werke (Munich, 1881-1908), IV, 8.Google Scholar

57 Br. 352, pp. 632 f. For a description of the tombstone, cf. Thausing, Moriz, “Die Celtes-Ciste der Wiener Universität,” Berichte und Mittheilungen des Alterthums-Vereines zu Wien, XVII (1877), 255 f.Google Scholar It is pictured in Rommel, Otto, ed., Wiener Renaissance (Vienna, 1947), 208.Google Scholar On the reaction of the humanists to his death, see Br. 340, pp. 614 ff;. Br. 343-57, pp. 619-38. Friedrich von Bezold, “Aus dem Freundeskreise des Konrad Celtis,” Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit, N. F. XXIX (1882), no. 4, cols. 93 ff., cites the Benedictine Chelidonius’ ode, “Elegia F. Benedicti Chelidonii Norici de fato Conradi Celtis Protucii poete laureati,” Münchener Staatsbibliothek, H. Eccl. 760, 4°, a handwritten copy by Hartmann Schedel.