Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/160

 148 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE other not very edifying things by which he undoubtedly sometimes endangered his reputation. His concep- tions of antiquity were tainted with the errors which afterwards became the cause of fierce battle between the younger Humanists and the defenders of revealed religion. Like Erasmus, he made repeated and whole- sale attacks on the ecclesiastical teaching of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, however, he was a zealous advocate of ecclesiastical literature, publishing and translating the works of the early Fathers and Christian writers, and in his prefaces and introductions there is always the true ring of a pure religious mind. The character of Willibald appears at its best in his brotherly relations with his sister Charity, abbess of St. Clare. The letters which the brother and sister exchanged, together with the memoirs of the abbess, are a precious legacy of wisdom, piety, and pure morality. Conrad Peutinger, born in 1465, the friend of Wilibald, exerted in his native town of Augsburg as great an intellectual influence as did the latter in Nuremberg. He was of a noble and generous nature, with a keen and far-reaching intellect. Already in his early years he had acquired at the colleges of Eome, Padua and Bologna, and by close intercourse with Pomponius Laetus, Picus of Mirandola, and Angelus Politianus, a thorough training in jurisprudence, belles- lettres, and art. After his fortieth year, and at the instance of Eeuchlin, he took up the study of Greek, and gained a mastery of the language. Ulrich Zasius reckons him among the few who arrived at a clear under- & standing of Poman law, and who were instrumental in rightly grafting it on to the German Code. He was also