Beatus Rhenanus

Beatus Rhenanus (22 August 1485 – 20 July 1547), also known as Beatus Bild, was a German humanist, religious reformer, classical scholar, and book collector.

Rhenanus was born in Schlettstadt (Sélestat) in Alsace. His father, Anton Bild, was a prosperous butcher from Rhinau (the source of his name "Rhenanus", which Beatus Latinised from his father, who was known as the "Rhinauer", the "man from Rheinau"). Anton emigrated to Schlettstadt and eventually became one of its Burgermeisters. He was able to provide his son with an excellent education. Rhenanus attended the famous Latin school of Schlettstadt, and in 1503, went to the University of Paris, where he came under the influence of Jacobus Faber Stapulensis, an eminent Aristotelian.

In 1507, he returned to Schlettstadt and then moved to Strassburg (Strasbourg), where he worked for the printer Mathias Schurer and made the acquaintance of the great Alsatian humanists, including Jakob Wimpfeling, Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg and Sebastian Brant.

In 1511, he relocated to Basel, where he befriended Desiderius Erasmus and played an active role in the publishing enterprises of Johann Froben. He returned to Schlettstadt in 1526 to devote himself to a life of learned leisure. He continued a lively correspondence with many contemporary scholars, including his friend Erasmus, and supervised the printing of many of Erasmus's most important works. Rhenanus died in Strasbourg.

Rhenanus's own publications include a biography of Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg (1510), the Rerum Germanicarum Libri III (1531), and editions of Velleius Paterculus (Froben, Basel, 1520), based on the sole surviving manuscript, which he discovered in the Benedictine monastery at Murbach, Alsace. He also wrote works on Tacitus (1519), Livy (1522), and a nine-volume work on his friend Erasmus (1540-1541).

Beatus Rhenanus invaluable collection of books went into the ownership of his hometown by his death and is still to be seen in its entirety in the Humanist Library of Sélestat.