Daily Archives: 25 Mar 2018

Zwingli and Hebrew

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Zwingli wrote to his friend Rhenanus that he intended

… to resume the study of Hebrew,—which he had begun at Einsiedeln,—and so he had ordered from Basel the Rudiments of Capnio, as he styles him who is better known now as Reuchlin, the famous Humanist. But he had made a similar start in 1519, and this time again he probably did not make much progress, for on March 25, 1522, he writes to Rhenanus: “Tell Pellican that I have begun Hebrew. Ye gods, how distasteful and melancholy a study! But I shall persist until I get something out of it.”

He persisted.  And he was successful.  By 1531, shortly before his death, the Zurich Bible was published.  It contained both Testaments, was a translation into German from Hebrew and Greek, and was the result of Zwingli’s efforts along with the other faculty of the Zurich ‘Prophezei’.

Veit Dietrich

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March 25, 1549: Veit Dietrich died in Nürnberg, Germany at the age of 42

Veit was probably the most famous of all of the boarders in the home of Martin and Katie Luther. He was born on December 8, 1506, also in Nürnberg. At the age of fifteen, he enrolled at the University of Wittenberg to study medicine. Soon, Martin Luther convinced him to study theology instead. Veit lived with the Luthers and became a recorder of Martin’s table talk and then went with him to Marburg and Coburg as his personal secretary. Many of the sermons and quotes that we have of Luther are due to Veit’s diligent recording.

Katie and Veit didn’t always seem to get along. Apparently he had a large number of students who followed him around, including to the Luther home, which made for extra work for Katie. But it’s undeniable that much that we know about Katie and life in the Black Cloister comes from Veit’s pen.

Any disagreements between Veit and Katie never seemed to last long and later, when he was a pastor at St. Sebald’s church in Nürnberg, Martin sent warm greetings to him from Katie.

-Rebecca DeGarmeaux (for Katie Luther on FB)