Hutten, Ulrich von (1488–1523)

German author, humanist, and militant defender of Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation. Born near Fulda, Hutten was sent as a boy to a Benedictine monastery, where he was prepared to join the order. Unwilling to submit to monastic discipline, however, he escaped and wandered from town to town, eventually arriving in Italy, where he became a student at the universities of Pavia and Bologna. On his return to Germany in 1512, he joined the armies of the Habsburg emperor Maximilian I. His essays and poetry gained him acclaim from the emperor, who named him poet laureate of the realm in 1517.

In 1519, he was converted by Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther's doctrine of “justification by faith” and his stand against the corrupt and tyrannical practices of the Catholic hierarchy. Hutten wrote Vadiscus, a bitter denunciation of the Papacy, in 1520, and in the same year published a work in German, Arouser of the German Nation, which called on his countrymen to rally to Martin Luther's side. Hutten took the Reformation one step further by organizing an anti-Catholic militia with Franz von Sickingen. The two men led the Knight's Revolt, mounting an attack on the estates of the Archbishop of Trier. They were defeated, however, and Hutten was forced to flee Germany. Arriving in Basel, he failed to enlist the widely respected humanist Desiderius Erasmus to his side. By this time he had made an enemy of the emperor Charles V, and the knights he had enlisted had degenerated into a rabble of highwaymen and thieves. Still a rallying figure for Protestants, Hutten was given shelter by Huldrych Zwingli on an island in Lake Zurich. There he died of an illness in 1523.

See Also: Luther, Martin; Reformation, Protestant; Zwingli, Huldrych