HILTEN, JOHANN: Franciscan monk of Eisen ach; b. in the diocese of Fulda before 1425; d. at Eisenach c. 1500. After he had studied in Erfurt and preached in Livonia, he entered the Franciscan monastery in Magdeburg. From 1477 he was kept a prisoner in the monasteries of Weimar and Eisen ach. He studied the Bible diligently, as well as the prophecies of St. Bridget of Sweden and of his contemporary Johann Lichtenberger. He at tacked ecclesiastical abuses, and on the basis of his studies of the Apocalypse predicted great revolutions in Church and State. He deplored the sepa ration between clergy and laity and denied the claim of the pope to be the vice-regent of Christ. According to Myconius he put the decline of the papal power in the year 1514, according to Me lanchthon in 1516. He extended the rule of the Turks in Europe, according to Myconius, from 600 to 1570; according to Melanchthon, he foretold that the Turks would rule as Gog and Magog in Germany and Italy in 1600; then he expected a reformation of Christianity and an annihilation of Mohammedanism. The last Holy Roman emperor, he said, would resign and restore his power to Christ; after the fall of Rome Antichrist would ap pear. He predicted the end of the world for 1651. Hilten can not be regarded as a "forerunner of the Reformation," but he belongs to the number of those who longed for a reform of the Church and tried to keep alive this desire by prophecies. He went back to Scripture and deplored the con tradiction between the claims of the hierarchy and the life of the Church and the Bible; but reformation he expected only by the fulfilment of the judgments of God predicted in the Apocalypse. He wrote commentaries on Daniel and the Apocalypse of which, however, only fragments came to the knowledge of the Reformers.

(P. Wolff.)

Bibliography: The report of a monk and a letter of My conius to Luther are in C. A. Heumann, Parerga critics, I., iii. 1 sqq., Göttingen, 1736, cf. ZKO, iii (1882), 305 sqq.; Luther's Works, Erlangen ed., xxv. 325, lx. 286; Luther's Briefs, ed. De Wette, iii. 514, 522, vi. 563; CR, i. 1108, iv. 780, vii. 653, 999, 1006, 1112, xiv. 841, xxiv. 64, 225, xxv. 14, 80, xxvii. 627, and the literature dealing with Luther's life, e.g., J. Köstlin, Martin Luther, ed. G. Kawerau, i. 29, Berlin, 1903. Consult also Ersch and Gruber, Encyklopädie, section II., viii. 190. Other literature is given in Hauck-Herzog, RE, viii. 78.

HIN. See Weights and Measures, Hebrew.