Conrad Lycosthenes

Conrad Lycosthenes , born Conrad Wolffhart (1518 - 1561), was a Savant and a Vulgarisateur of sciences Alsacien of the 16th century. Deacon of Saint-Léonard to Basle, professor of grammar and dialectical, Lycosthène had a passion for the study of the nature and the physique of the sphere.

Biography

He was born on August 8th, 1518 with Rouffach, village of Alsace, of Theobald Wolffhart, Consul of the places, and Elizabeth Pellican, sister of Conrad Pellican. He transformed his name of birth later, Wolffhart, in Lycosthenes, version grecized of the same name.
One sent it to the 17 years age to Heidelberg where it was accepted Maître are Arts in 1539. It applied then to Theology and bound to it friendship with Henri Stoll, Pasteur of this city, which carried out it in 1541 to Ratisbon to the assembly of Théologiens.
Of return to Heidelberg, it continued there its studies of Theology, to which it united those of History, until the following year 1542 when it decided to leave for Basle with his fellow student, Henri Pantaleon.
With Basle, he taught Grammar and the Dialectical one during three years, then he is named Diacre of the church of Saint-Leonard in 1545, function which he preserved until the end of his vie.
In 1554, it had an attack of Hemiplégie which to him seizes all the right-sided and the language, but it lasted only a few days. It lost of it however entirely the use of the right hand, in the absence of which it was accustomed to write gauche.
It Maria meanwhile with Herbster Christian woman, sister of the famous printer Johannes Oporinus (Oporin) and widow of Leonard Zwinger, father of Theodor Zwinger (the old one).
It is in 1557 that it published the first edition of its work entitled: Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon . This book is a collection of the most interest from the historical point of view: the illustrations which fill it, are engravings on wood, coarse, primitive, but charming of naivety. They refer to some phenomena whose Lycosthène gives the enumeration. It will be noticed that the drawing of the book of Lycosthène offers this singular characteristic to represent at the time of the Romans (earthquake of 340 av. J. - C.) a city of the Middle Ages. The editors of the sixteenth century, were not, appears it, quite scrupulous, from the point of view of historical exactitude. The book of the wonders of Lycosthène is filled with extraordinary facts, mirages, falls of cross, rains of blood, etc; the documents which it contains are obviously presented in a fictitious form, but they do not have less one real origin, and recall of it a succession curious about phenomena relating to the meteorology and the physique of the globe.
He lived seven more years before being carried by a violent attack of apoplexy on March 25th, 1561, at the age of 43 ans.
He was buried in the church of Saint-Léonard with this epitaph:
Siste gradum Viator : if no-claims bonus are, morere victurus; sin malus, lives moriturus. Hocce Conradus ego Lycosthenes Rubeacensis, Philosophia perennis compendium, aterni luminum datoris benig. per 42. valetudinaria aetatis annos. Seduloque M.7.D.7 ferio commentatus, 8. Kal. Aprilis not improviso apoplexia turbine AD certam immortalitatem anno ejusdem Repar. 1561. praeter votum metumque abreptus, left literariae multam saltem, so not magnam, reliqui usuram posteris. Who pals will meliora, debes; atque C praestes, in rem tuam abi.

Works

1547 C.Plinii secundi liber of Viris illustribus, emendatus & Commentario illustribus . Basilae 1547. In-8°. It. Ibid 1552, in-fol.
Lycosthenes allotted wrongly to Pline this work of Aurelius Victor.
1551 Elenchus scriptorum omnium , Basel, in-4°.
1551 Gnomologia ex AEneae Sylvii operibus collected , Basel, edit.1555, in 4°.
1552 Iulii Obsequentis Prodigiorum liber, ab urbe condita usque AD Augustum Caesarem, cujus tantum extabat Fragmentum, nunc demum Historiarum beneficio, per Conradum Lycosthenem Rubeaquensem, integrati suae restitutus . Basilae, ex off. Ioannis Oporinii, Anno Salutis humanae, M.D.LII. Mense Martio, in-8°.
1552 J. Ravisii Textoris officina , Basel.
1555 Apophthegmatum sive responsorum memorabilium, ex probatissimis quibusque tam graecis quam latinis auctoribus priscis pariter atque recentioribus, collectorum Loci communes AD ordinem alphabeticum redacti , Basel, in fol.
1557 Epitome Stobaei Sententiarum , Basel, in -8°.
1557 Parabolae sive similitudines ex VAr. auct. ab Erasmo collectae, in locos common redactae , Bern in-4°; Basel, 1575,1602, in-8°.
1557 Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon, quae praeter naturae ordinem, and in superioribus and his inferioribus mundi regionibus, ab exordio mundi usque AD haec will nostra will tempora acciderunt . Basileae per H. $petri, fol, 672 p. fig. and pl. (64).
1559 Dom. Brusonii Facetiarum lib. VII , Basel, in-4°.
1560 Controlled investigationis omnium locorum in tabula Helvetiae contentorum , Basel, in-4°.

Sources

Jean-Pierre Niceron, Memories to be used for the history of the man famous in the republic of the letters… , Volume XXXI, Paris, 1729-1741, pp. 339-346.
Protestant France or Lives of the French Protestants , Volume IX, Paris, 1859, pp. 542-543.
Nature N°13 of August 30th, 1873
Jürgen Beyer, “Lycosthenes, Conrad”, in Enzyklopädie of Märchens. Handwörterbuch zur historischen und vergleichenden Erzählforschung , volume. 8, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1996, coll 1323-1326

External bonds

Lycosthenes (1518-1561)

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