This literary Knight and German patriot was descended from an ancient but impoverished
noble family of Franconia. He was born April 21, 1488, and began life, like Erasmus, as an
involuntary monk; but he escaped from Fulda in his sixteenth year, studied humanities in the
universities of Erfurt, Cologne, and Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, law at Pavia and Bologna, traveled
extensively, corresponded with the most prominent men of letters, was crowned as poet by the
Emperor Maximilian at Augsburg (1517), and occupied an influential position at the court of
Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz (1517–1520), who had charge of the sale of indulgences in Germany.
He took a lively part in Reuchlin’s conflict with the obscurantism of the Dominicans of
Cologne.^226 He is, next to his friend Crotus of Erfurt, the chief author of the Epistolae obscurorum
Virorum, that barbarous ridicule of barbarism, in which the ignorance, stupidity, bigotry, and
vulgarity of the monks are exposed by factitious letters in their own wretched Latin with such
success that they accepted them at first as genuine, and bought a number of copies for distribution.^227
He vigorously attacked the abuses and corruptions of the Church, in Latin and German pamphlets,
in poetry and prose, with all the weapons of learning, common-sense, wit, and satire. He was, next
to Luther, the boldest and most effective polemical writer of that period, and was called the German
Demosthenes on account of his philippics against Rome. His Latin is better than Luther’s, but his
German far inferior. In wit and power of ridicule he resembles Lucian; at times he reminds one of
Voltaire and Heine. He had a burning love of German liberty and independence. This was his chief
motive for attacking Rome. He laid the axe at the root of the tree of tyranny. His motto was, "Iacta
est alea. Ich hab’s gewagt."^228
He republished in 1518 the tract of Laurentius Valla on the Donation of Constantine, with
an embarrassing dedication to Pope Leo X., and exposed on German soil that gigantic fraud on
which the temporal power of the papacy over all Christian Europe was made to rest. But his chief
and most violent manifesto against Rome is a dialogue which he published under the name "Vadiscus,
or the Roman Trinity," in April, 1520, a few months before Luther’s "Address to the German
Nobility" (July) and his "Babylonian Captivity" (October). He here groups his experiences in Rome
under several triads of what abounds in Rome, of what is lacking in Rome, of what is forbidden in
Rome, of what one brings home from Rome, etc. He puts them into the mouth of a Roman consul,
Vadiscus, and makes variations on them. Here are some specimens:^229 —
"Three things keep Rome in power: the authority of the Pope, the bones of the saints, and
the traffic in indulgences.
"Three things are in Rome without number: strumpets, priests, and scribes.
"Three things abound in Rome: antiquities, poison, and ruins.
(^226) Triumphus Capnionis (κάπνιος = Reuchlin), a poem written in 1514, but not published till 1518 under the pseudo-name of Eleutherius
Byzenus. Works, III. 413-447; Strauss, U. v. H., 155 sq.
(^227) First published 1515 [at Hagenau], and 1517 at Basel; best ed. by Böcking, in Hutten’s Opera, Suppl. i. Lips. (1864), and commentary
in Suppl. ii. (1869); an excellent critical analysis by Strauss, l.c. 165 sqq. He compares them with Don Quixote. The first book of the
Epist. is chiefly from Crotus, the second chiefly from Hutten. The comic impression arises in great part from the barbarous Latinity, and
is lost in a translation. There is, however, a good German translation by Dr. Wilhelm Binder: Briefe von Dunkelmännern. Stuttgart, 1876.
The translator says he knew twenty-seven Latin editions, but no translation.
(^228) "The die is cast. I have ventured it." An allusion to the exclamation of Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon, and marched to Rome.
(^229) Strauss, U. v. H., p. 285 sqq., 289; and his translation, in Hutten’s Gespr. p. 94 sqq., 114 sqq. I have omitted the interlocutories in
the dialogue. Vadiscus is Hutten’s friend Crotus of Erfurt (also Luther’s friend); and Ernhold is his friend Arnold Glauberger, with whom
he had been in Rome.