Konrad Celtis
- Category : Humanities+Social-Sciences-Linguist
- Type : MGE
- Profile : 5/1 - Heretical / Investigator
- Definition : Single
- Incarnation Cross : LAX Refinement 2
Biography
German Renaissance humanist scholar and Neo-Latin poet.
Celtis was one of the first German humanists to visit Italy. After 10 years of wandering he came to resent the Italian attitude of cultural superiority and was determined to rescue his fellow Germans from medieval barbarism. He sought to promote literary societies among the humanists as a means of combating the scholastics and of creating a truly German culture. After his time in Italy he studied mathematics and poetry at the University of Cracow. Then he became a professor of rhetoric at the University of Ingolstadt and in 1497 accepted an invitation from the emperor Maximilian to be a professor at the University of Vienna. There he established a College of Poets and Mathematicians, wrote poems and plays, and taught until his death in 1508.
Conrad Celtis earned a reputation as the finest lyric poet among the German humanists. His reputation as a poet resulted in Emperor Frederick III's crowning him as the first German poet laureate of the Empire. In his verses he imitated the Roman writers Horace and Ovid. His poetry described mountains and streams that are alive in the spirit of a nature pantheism that sought inspiration in the religion of forest and field and of the ancient Germans and in the teachings of the Druidic priestly fraternity.
He died 4 February 1508.