Background
Conrad Celtes was the son of a vintner named Pickel (of which Celtes is the Greek translation), was born at Wipfeld near Schweinfurt. He early ran away from home to avoid being set to his father's trade.
Conrad Celtes was the son of a vintner named Pickel (of which Celtes is the Greek translation), was born at Wipfeld near Schweinfurt. He early ran away from home to avoid being set to his father's trade.
Conrad Celtes studied at the University of Cologne and at the University of Heidelberg (1484).
In 1486 Conrad Celtes published his first book, Ars versificandi et carminum, which created an immense sensation and gained him the honour of being crowned as the first poet laureate of Germany, the ceremony be'ing performed by the emperor Frederick III at the diet of Nuremberg in 1487.
In 1497 he was appointed by the emperor Maximilian I professor of poetry and rhetoric at Vienna, and in 1502 was made head of the new Collegium Poetarum et Mathe- maticorum, with the right of conferring the laureateship.
He did much to introduce system into the methods of teaching, to purify the Latin of learned intercourse, and to further the study of the classics, especially the Greek.
He projected a great work on Germany; but of this only the Germania generalis and an historical work in prose, De origine, situ, moribus et institutis Nurimbergae libellus, saw the light.
He composed odes, elegies, epigrams, dramatic pieces and an unfinished epic, the Theodoriceis.
His epigrams, edited by Hart- felder, were published at Berlin in 1881.
Conrad Celtes was more of a free-thinking humanist and placed a higher value on the ancient pagan, rather than the Christian ideal. His friend Willibald Pirckheimer had blunt discussions with him on that subject.