Konrad Pellikan

Konrad Pellikan (; ; sometimes anglicized as Conrad Pellican; 8 January 1478 – 6 April 1556) was an Alsatian Protestant theologian, humanist, Protestant reformer and Christian Hebraist who worked chiefly in Switzerland.

Life

Pellikan was born on 8 January 1478 in Rouffach, Alsace. His German surname, "Kurscherer" ("Kürsner") was changed to "Pellicanus" by his mother's brother, Jodocus Gallus, an ecclesiastic connected with the University of Heidelberg, who supported his nephew for sixteen months at the university in 1491-1492. On returning to Rouffach, he entered the Franciscan convent. There he taught gratis at the convents school in order he might borrow books from the library, and in his sixteenth year resolved to become a friar. This step helped his studies, for he was sent to Tübingen in 1496 and became a favorite pupil of the guardian of the Minorite convent there, Paulus Scriptoris, a man of considerable general learning.

He taught Hebrew, Greek, mathematics and cosmography at the Franciscan monastery of St. Katherina in Rouffach, in the upper Alsace. He subsequently taught at Pforzheim and Tübingen. There seems to have been at that time in southwest Germany a considerable amount of sturdy independent thought among the Franciscans; Pellikan himself became a Protestant very gradually, and without any such revulsion of feeling as marked Martin Luther's conversion. At Tübingen the future "apostate in three languages" was able to begin the study of Hebrew. He had no teacher and no grammar; but Paulus Scriptoris carried him a huge codex of the prophets on his own shoulders all the way from Mainz.

He learned the letters from the transcription of a few verses in the Star of the Messiah of Petrus Niger, and, with a subsequent hint or two from Johannes Reuchlin, who also lent him the grammar of Moses Kimhi, made his way through the Bible for himself with the help of Jerome's Latin. In 1501 he became the first Christian to compose a Hebrew grammar. It was printed in 1503, and afterwards included in Reysch's Margarita philosophica. Hebrew remained a favorite study to the last.

Pellikan became a priest in 1501 and following entered the Barfüsser convent in Basel in 1502. At that time he also taught at the Franciscan monastery in Basel. His lectures concerned the Book of Genesis, and Salomon in the Old Testament. Quadruplex Psalterium. Basel, 1516. Commentarii in prophetas, 1525. Index bibliorum. Zürich, 1537. Commentaria Bibliorum Et Illa Brevia Quidem Ac Catholica, 1538.