Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/139

 PIRO

109

PIRO

Easter, 1529. At last a peaceful death freed her from bodily sufferings and attacks of the enemies of her convent. Her sister, Clara, and her niece, Katrina, daughter of Willibald, succeeded her as abbess. The last abbess was Ursula Muff el. Towards the end of the century the convent was closed.

Charitas Pirkheimeh, Denfcwiirdigkeiten, ed. Hofler (Bam- berg, 1852) : Loose, Aus dem Leben der Charitas Pirkheimer (Dresden, 1870); Binder, Charitas Pirkheimer (2nd ed., Frei- burg, 1S7S).

Klemens Loffler.

Pirkheimer, Willibald, German Humanist, b. at Eichstatt, 5 December, 1470; d. at Nuremberg, 22 Decen^ber, 1.530. He was the son of the episcopal councillor and distinguished lawyer, Johannes Pirk- heimer, whose family came from Nuremberg, which Willibald regarded as his native place. He studied jurisprudence, the classics, and music at the Universi- ties of Padua and Pavia (14S9-95). In 1495 he mar- ried Crescentia Rieter (d. 1504), by whom he had five daughters. From 1498 to 1523, when he voluntarily retired, he was one of the town councillors of Nurem- berg, where he was the centre of the Humanistic movement, and was considered one of the most dis- tinguished representatives of Germany. His house stood open to everyone who sought intellectual im- provement, and was celebrated by Celtis as the gath- ering place of scholars and artists. His large corre- spondence shows the extent of his literary connexions. In 1499, with the aid of a capable soldier, he led the Nuremberg contingent in the Swiss war, his classical history of which appeared in 1610 and won for him the name of the German Xenophon. Maximilian ap- pointed him imperial councillor. He owes his fame to his many-sided learning, and few were as widely read as he in the Greek and Latin literatures. He translated Greek classics, e. g., Euclid, Xenophon, Plato, Ptolemy, Plutarch, Lucian, and the Church Fathers into Latin. Like Erasmus, he paid less atten- tion to a literal rendering than to the sense of his trans- lations, and thus produced works which can be com- pared with the best of the translated literature of that period. He also wrote a work on the earliest history of Germany, and was interested in astronomy, math- ematics, the natural sciences, numismatics, and art. Albert Diirer was one of his friends and has painted his characteristic portrait. He defended Reuchlin in the latter's dispute with the theologians of Cologne.

At the beginning of the Reformation he took sides with Luther, whose able opponent, Johann Eck, he attacked in the coarse satire"Eckius dedolatus" (Eck planed down). On behalf of Luther he also wrote a second bitter satire, in an unprinted comedy, called "Schutzschrift". Consequently his name was in- cluded in the Bull of excommunication of 1520, and in 1521 he was absolved "not without painful personal humiliation", was required to acknowledge Luther's doctrine to be heresy, and denounce it formally by oath. Nevertheless, up to 1525 his sympathies were with the Reformation, but as the struggle went on, like many other Humanists, he turned aside from the movement and drew towards the Church, with which he did not wish to break. In Luther, whom he had at first regarded as a reformer, he saw finally a teacher of false doctrines, "completely a prey to delusion and led by the evil fiend". Luther's theological ideas had never been matters of conscience to him, hence the results of the changes, the decay of the fine arts, the spread of the movement socially and economically, the religious quarrels, and the excesses of zealots repelled him as it did his friend Erasmus who was in intellectual .sympathy with him. His sister, Charitas, was the Abbess of the Convent of ,St. Clara at Nurem- berg, where another sister, Clara, and his daughters, Katharina and Crescentia, were also nuns. From 1524 they were troubled by the petty annoyances and "efforts at conversion" of the city council that had

become Lutheran. This affected him deeply and aided in extinguishing his enthusiasm for the Reformation. His last literary labour, which he addressed to the council in 1530, was on behalf of the convent; this was the "Oratio apologetica monialium nomine", a master-piece of its kind.

Pirkheimer, Opera (Frankfort. 1610); Roth, Willibald Pirk- heimer (Halle, 1887); Hagen. Pirkheimer in aeinem Verhaltnis zum Humanismus und zur Reformation (Nuremberg, 1882) ; Drews, Pirkheimers Stellung zur Reformation (Leipzig, 1887) ; Reiman.v, Pirkheimerstudien (Berlin, 1900).

Klemens Loffler.

Piro Indians, a tribe of considerable importance ranging by water for a distance of three hundred miles along the upper Ucayali (Tambo) River, and its affluents, the Apurimac and Urubamba, Depart- ment of Loreto, in northeastern Peru. Their chief centre in the last century was the mission town of Santa Rosa de los Piros, at the confluence of the Tambo and L^rubamba (.Santa Ana). To the Qui- chua-speaking tribes of Peru they are known as Chontaquiro, nearly equivalent to "Black Teeth", from their former custom of staining their teeth and gums with a black dye from the chonta or black-wood palm (peperonia linclorioidcs). They are also known as Simirinches. They belong to the great Arawakan linguistic stock, to which also belong the warlike Campa of the extreme upper Ucayali and the cele- brated Moxos (q. V.) of Bolivia, wliose main territory was about the lower Orinoco and in the West Indies. The Piro excel all the other tribes of the ITcayali both in strength and vitality, a fact which may be due to the more moderate temperature and superior health- fulness of their country. As contrasted with their neighbours they are notably jovial and versatile, but aggressively talkative, inclined to bullying, and not always dependable. They are of quick intelligence and have the Indian gift for languages, many of them speaking Quichua, Spanish, and sometimes Portu- guese, inadditiontotheirown. Like most of the tribes of the region they are semi-agricultural, depending chiefly upon the plantain or banana and the maguey (manhiot), which produce abundantly almost without care. The preparation from these of the intoxicating masato or chicha, to which they are given to excess, forms the principal occupation of the women in all the tribes of the Ucayali country. They also make use of fish and the oil from turtle eggs. 'Their houses are light, open structures thatched with palm leaves, with sleeping hammocks, hand-made earthen pots, and the wooden masalo trough for furniture. "Their dress is a sort of shirt for the men and a short skirt for the women, both of their own weaving from native cotton and dyed black. They wear silver nose pen- dants and paint their faces black. The men are splen- did and daring boatmen, in which capacity their ser- vices are in constant requisition. In their primitive condition the Piro used the bow, lance, and blowgun with poisoned arrows. They were polygamists and made constant raids upon the weaker tribes for the purpose of carrying off women. They buried their dead, without personal belongings, in canoes in the earthen floor of the house. Their principal divinities were a benevolent creative spirit or hero-god called Huyacali, and an evil spirit, Saminchi, whom they greatly feared. They had few dances or other cere- monies.

The first missions on the upper UcayaU were under- taken in 1673 under Fr. Biedma, of the I>anciscan Convent of the Twelve Apostles in Peru, who had already been at work on the Huallaga since 1631. In 1674 the warlike Campa attacked and destroyed the mission established among them and massacred four missionaries together with an Indian neophyte. In 1687 Fr. Biedma himself was killed by the Piro. Others were murdered or sank under the climate until in 1694, when Frs. Valero, Huerta, and Zavala were