WIMPFELING, vimp'f6-ling (WIMPHELING), JAKOB: Humanistic theologian; b. at Schlettstadt (29 m. s.w. of Strasburg) July 25, 1450; d. there Nov. 17, 1528. He entered in 1464 the University of Freiburg, and in 1468 removed to the University of Erfurt; in the following year he went to Heidelberg where he became master of philosophy in 1471. In 1483 he was called as cathedral preacher to Speyer, where he remained fourteen years, though the pulpit work was done by others because of the vocal weakness of Wimpfeling; but as prebendary he wrote and workedin the interest of the church of Speyer and its clergy. His efforts were aimed at a better discipline of the clergy, a more frequent convocation of synods, and a devoted adoration of Mary. After 1487 he seems to have possessed the parish in Sulz near Molsheim as an inheritance from a paternal uncle. He refused prebends in the chapter of St. Thomas in Strasburg and at the cathedral in Mainz as hindrances to study in science and to contemplation. In 1498 he became professor of rhetoric and poetics at the University of Heidelberg, and in 1501 his friend Geiler von Kaisersberg induced him to remove to Stra,sburg, where he, Sebastian Brant, and Geiler were active in the interest of church and school and exercised a decisive influence upon the spiritual life of Strasburg which lasted until the days of Butzer, Capito, and Sturm. In 1503 Wimpfeling followed his friend Bishop Christoph von Utenheim to Basel, and soon went to the University of Freiburg, whence he had to remove because of his invectives against

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the monks, while a flood of literature poured forth in poetry and prose. Wimpfeling was accused at Rome and cited before the pope; but the popular voice was in his favor, and the two bishops of Stras burg and Basel defended him. Between 1508 and 1512 Wimpfeling frequently changed his home, and in 1513 Christoph von Utenheim, bishop of Basel, requested him "to assume the leadership of a new ly reformed convent," the locality of which is not known. In 1515 he left this office and removed to Schlettstadt, where he spent the last years of his life. As in Strasburg, so here he gathered a circle of disciples and admirers who about 1518 seem to have organized in a literary society which fell to pieces before Luther's movement. Wimpfeling planned great things, but accom plished little. He was overshadowed by Erasmus and left no generally diffused influence; in his nar rower circle he unintentionally prepared the way for the Reformation. His numerous works axe con cerned with politics, philology, theology, history, and poetry. Worthy of special mention are his pedagogical treatises Isidoneus germanicus (1496) and Adolescentia, which are distinguished by sound thoughts on education. In his Germania (1501) he showed himself an enthusiastic German patriot; in the first part he attempted to prove that the left border of the Rhine never belonged to Gaul. In Epitome rerum Germanicarum (1505) Wimpfeling presented a concise history of the Germans.

(H. Hermelink.)

Bibliography: The autobiographic Expurgatio is repro duced in J. A. Riegger's Amoenitatis litterario: Friburgen ses, Ulm, 1775. Consult further: J. Knepper, in Erlku terungen . . . zu Janssens Geschichte, vol. iii., parts 2-4, Freiburg, 1902; Zeitschrdft für Geschichte des Oberrheins, 1903, pp. 46 sqq., 1906, pp. 40 sqq., 262 sqq., 1907, pp. 478 sqq.; also C. Schmidt, Hist. litt&aire de t'Alsace, Paris, 1879; and J. Janssen, Hist. of the German People, iii. 1-8, St. Louis, 1900; KL, xii. 1675-82 (gives titles of the earlier biographies, which are reviewed ably in Xnep per's work referred to above).