Primary Contributors:
Amy Nelson Burnett, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Michael Hummelberg (1487–1527)
Michael Hummelberg (Hummelberger, Humelbergius) never achieved the fame or social position of other German humanists, but he was an important representative of the first generation of Germans to learn Greek outside of Italy. He was born into an artisan family in Ravensburg around 1487. He matriculated at Heidelberg in 1501 and received his B.A. in 1503, then moved to Paris, where he associated with several other German students, including Beatus Rhenanus and the brothers Bruno and Basilius Amerbach. In 1505, he received his M.A. and worked as a corrector for the printer Josse Bade while continuing his studies. His teachers included the theologians Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and Josse Clichtove, and he learned Greek from Georgius Hermonymus (who taught Greek to Reuchlin and Erasmus) and Girolamo Aleandro.
In 1511, Hummelberg returned home to Ravensburg, but he kept in epistolary contact with his friends and teachers in Paris and began to correspond with the humanist circle in Tübingen. He travelled to Rome in 1514 to continue his study of canon law and work in the papal curia. As a member of the circle of German humanists in that city, he kept Johannes Reuchlin informed of the inquisitorial process against him. Hummelberg returned to Germany in 1517, was ordained in Constance the following year, and became a chaplain at the church of St Michael in Ravensburg. By this time his correspondence circle had expanded to include most of the prominent humanists in southwestern Germany. He was esteemed for his knowledge of Greek and, in 1520, he was invited to Constance teach that language to Johann Fabri, Urbanus Rhegius, and others. Through his Constance acquaintances he met Erasmus during the latter’s visit to the city in 1522.
Hummelberg was an early supporter of Luther, and in the early 1520s he corresponded with Philipp Melanchthon, Ulrich Zwingli, and Joachim Vadian, as well as with several south German students studying in Wittenberg. After the outbreak of the eucharistic controversy, he rejected the position of Andreas Karlstadt and the Swiss reformers and, shortly before his death, he told Willibald Pirckheimer that the divisions and the moral failings he saw among members of the evangelical party had persuaded him to remain loyal to the old church. He died following a stroke on 19 May 1527.
Key Bibliographic Source(s)
Manuscript:
Munich, Bavarian State Library, MS Clm 4007, available on-line at:
https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb00091797?page=,1
Print:
Arbenz, Emil, and Hermann Wartmann, eds, Die Vadianische Briefsammlung der Stadtbibliothek St. Gallen, 7 vols Mitteilungen zur Vaterländischen Geschichte 24–30a (St. Gallen: Fehr, 1884–1913).
Dall’Asta, Matthias, et al., Johannes Reuchlin, Briefwechsel, 4 vols (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1999–2013).
Egli, Emil, et al., eds, Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, 21 vols, Corpus Reformatorum 88–108 (Leipzig and Zurich: Heinsius and TVZ, 1905–2013).
Gillert, Karl, ed., Der Briefwechsel des Conradus Mutianus, 2 vols, Geschichtsquellen der Provinz Sachsen und angrenzender Gebiete, vol. Ältere Reihe 18, I/II (Halle: Druck und Verlag von Otto Hendel, 1890).
Hartmann, Alfred, et al., eds, Die Amerbachkorrespondenz (Basel: Universitätsbibliothek, 1942–2010).
Hirstein, James S., et al., eds, Epistulae Beati Rhenani: la correspondance latine et grecque de Beatus Rhenanjs de Sélestat: edition critique raisoné, avec traduction et commentaire (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013–).
Horawitz, Adalbert, and Karl Hartfelder, eds, Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus (Hildesheim: Olms, 1966; original publication Leipzig: Teubner, 1886).
Horawitz, Adalbert, Analecten zur Geschichte des Humanismus in Schwaben (1512–1518) (Vienna: Karl Gerold’s Sohn, 1877).
Horawitz, Adalbert, Michael Hummelberger. Eine biographische Skizze (Berlin: Calvary, 1875).
Horawitz, Adalbert, ‘Analecten zur Geschichte der Reformation und des Humanismus in Schwaben’, Sitzungsberichte der phil.-hist. Classe der kais. Akademie der Wissenchaften, 89 (1878), pp. 95–186.
Horawitz, Adalbert, ‘Zur Biographie und Korrespondenz Johannes Reuchlins’, Sitzungsberichte der phil.-hist. Classe der kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 85 (Vienna: Karl Gerold’s Sohn, 1877).
König, Erich, ed., Konrad Peutingers Briefwechsel, Humanisten-Briefe 1. (Munich: Beck, 1923).
Neff, Joseph, ‘Aus dem Briefwechsel des Humanisten Michael Hummelberger mit Conrad Peutinger’, Frh. Chr. zu Schwarzenberg und K. Ursinus Velius. Analekten zur Geschichte des deutschen Humanismus, 1 (Tübingen, 1900).
Paquier, Jules, Lettres familières de J. Aléandre 1510–1540 (Paris: Librairie Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1909).
Reicke, Emil, et al., eds, Willibald Pirckheimers Briefwechsel, 7 vols (Munich: Beck, 1940–2009).
Scheible, Heinz, et al., eds, Melanchthons Briefwechsel: Kritische und kommentierte Gesamtausgabe (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1977–).
Schiess, Traugott, ed., Briefwechsel der Brüder Ambrosius und Thomas Blaurer 1509–1548, 3 vols (Freiburg i.Br.: Fehsenfeld, 1908–1912).
Contents
This list contains 354 letters written between 1506 and April 1527. Of these, 254 were written by Michael Hummelberg, and 100 sent to him. The letters are in Latin, but about half have at least a word or two in Greek, and five are written entirely in Greek. Two of the Latin letters also include Hebrew words.
Provenance
320 of these letters are preserved in a bound manuscript in the Bavarian State Library in Munich (call no. Clm 4007), which is described in detail in Dall’Asta and Dörner, eds, Johannes Reuchlin. Briefwechsel, vol. 3, pp. LIV–LXVII. About 180 of the letters in this manuscript were published by Adalbert Horawitz in four separate articles from the late nineteenth century; others have been published in the modern critical editions of Hummelberg’s correspondents. The manuscript was written in a clear and legible italic hand by Michael’s brother Gabriel, a physician in Feldkirch. Following his brother’s early death, Gabriel intended to publish the letters, but he was dissuaded from doing so by Beatus Rhenanus (see Gabriel to Rhenanus, 29 June 1531, in Horawitz and Hartfelder, Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus, pp. 397–9, no. 279). Instead, Rhenanus oversaw publication of Michael Hummelberg’s Epitome Grammaticae Graecae (Basel: Herwagen, 1534), with a dedicatory letter to the publisher Johann Herwagen that contained biographical information about his old friend (Horawitz and Hartfelder, Briefwechsel, pp. 405–07, no. 283). Already in 1528, Gabriel told Willibald Pirckheimer that he would publish only those letters that ‘contained something of erudition or history and piety’, and that he would destroy any that might be misinterpreted (Reicke, et al., Willibald Pirckheimers Briefwechsel, 7, pp. 145–8, no. 1202). Several of the last pages from the Munich manuscript have been cut out, probably because they contained letters considered potentially problematic. None of Hummelberg’s correspondence with either Zwingli or Vadian is preserved in the manuscript, and it seems likely that these were among those removed from the volume.
Further resources
Bibliography
Binder, Helmut, ‘Die Brüder Michael Hummelberg, Humanist und Theologe 1487–1527, und Gabriel Hummelberg, Humanist, Arzt und Naturforscher um 1490–um 1543’, in Lebensbilder aus Schwaben und Franken, ed. Robert Uhland, Schwäbische Lebensbilder, 12, 1–24 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1972).
Guenther, Ilse, ‘Michael Hummelberg’, in Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Peter Bietenholz, et al., 3 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985–7), vol. 2, pp. 213–14.
Schirrmeister, Albert, ‘Hummelberg, Michael’, in Deutscher Humanismus 1480–1520. Verfasserlexikon, ed. Franz Josef Worstbrock, 3 vols (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005–15), vol. 1, pp. 1165–73.