BRUNFELS 17 



OTTO BRUNFELS 1 



1484-1534 



Herbarum vivas eioones ... per 0th. Brunf. 3 pts. Fol. Strasburg, 1830-6. 

 Contrafayt * Kreuterbuoh . . . duroh Otto Brunfels newlioh besohrieben. 

 2 vols. Fol. Strasburg, 1532-7. 



Brunfels was born at Mayence, and received an uni- 

 versity education, being destined by his parents for the 

 church. At the age of thirty-seven he found himself in 

 a Carthusian monastery, whose restraints now proved 

 intolerable, for he was strongly impelled to join the 

 new humanist and reforming movement. In 1521, the 

 year of Luther's appearance at the diet of Worms, 

 Brunfels fled from the cloister. He soon found employ- 

 ment as a Lutheran pastor, or as a schoolmaster, but 

 settled at Strasburg in 1524, and henceforth employed 

 his learning, which seems to have been considerable, 

 in writing for the booksellers. Pedagogy, theology, 

 medicine and botany by turns engaged his attention. 

 It is not easy to understand how he acquired such a 

 knowledge of medicine as procured for him not only the 

 doctorate in medicine of the university of Basle, but 

 considerable repute as a physician. An enterprising 

 bookseller of Strasburg, named Schott, engaged him to 

 write a new herbal, which was to take advantage of the 

 new learning, and also of the remarkable improvements 

 in wood-engraving, which had been efiiected of late 

 years. The first volume appeared only six years 

 after Brunfels' settlement in Strasburg, so that his 



1 Fuller biographical information will be found in a paper by F. W. E. Roth 

 in the Botanische Zeitung, 1899, pp. 191-232. There is an interesting dis- 

 cussion of Brunfels' botanical work in E. L. Greene's Lamknarhs of Botanical 

 History, Smithsonian Collectioms, pt. 1, 1909, pp. 165-191. 



^ Contrafayt means portrayed or pictured, as in the inscription, " Albreoht 

 Durer's Conterfeyt" (1527). 



B 



