Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum

Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum ('Letters of Obscure Men') is the title of a collection of satirical letters which appeared, in dog-Latin, at the commencement of the 16th century, and professed to be the composition of certain ecclesiastics and professors in Cologne and other places in Rhenish Germany. They were directed against the scholastics and monks, and lashed with merciless severity their doctrines, writings, morals, modes of speech, manners of life, follies, and extravagances, and thus helped in no small degree to bring about the Reformation. The con- troversy of Reuchlin with the baptised Jew, Pfefferkorn, concerning Hebrew books, gave the first occasion to the Epistolæ, and it is probable that their title itself was suggested by the Epistolæ Clarorum Virorum ad Reuchlinum (1514). On the first appearance of the work, it was fathered on Reuchlin; afterwards it was ascribed to Reuchlin, to Erasmus, and to Hutten. By many it has been held that Hutten was the chief author, and Crotus Rubianus his chief assistant in the work, which appeared at Hagenau in 1516 (but professedly at Venice). But though Hutten certainly wrote the letters which appeared in 1517 as a second part of the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, it cannot be said to have been proved that he had any share in the first part, of which Crotus Rubianus would accordingly be the chief author, as he certainly was the suggester of the scheme. The circumstance of the Epistolæ being placed in the Index Exurgatorius by a papal bull helped to spread it not a little. Among the numerous editions of the work, the best is Böcking's, with commentary, in his edition of Hutten's works (1869). See D. F. Strauss's Ulrich von Hutten (Eng. trans. 1874), and Mark Pattison's Essays (2 vols. 1889).