EPISTOLE OBSCURORIIM VIRORIMI (Lat. Letters of Obscure Men) is the title of a collection of satirical letters which appeared at the commencement of the 16th c., and professed to be the composition of certain ecclesiastics and professors in Cologne and other places in Rhenish Germany. They were directed against the scholastics and monks, and lashed with merciless severity their doctrines, writings, morals, modes of speech, manner of life, follies and extravagances, and thus helped in no small degree to. bring about the reformation. The controversy of Reuchlin with the baptized Jew, Pfefferkorn, concerning Hebrew punctuation, gave the first occasion to the Epistoke, and it is probable that their title itself was suggested by the Epistoke Clarorum Virorum ad' 1?euchlinum Phorcensum (1514). They were addressed to Octuin Gratius in Deventer, who was by no means so complete an ignoramus as might be supposed from this circum stance, but who had made himself odious to the liberal minds of the time by his arro gant pretension and his determined hostility to the spirit of his age. On the first appear
ance of the work, it was fathered on Reuchlin; afterwards, it was ascribed to Reuchlin, Erasmus, and Hutton. More recent investigators have inclined to the belief, that the first part, which appeared at IIagenau in 1515 (but professedly at Venice), was the pro duction of Wolfgang Angst, a learned and witty book-printer of that town; but, latterly, doubt has also been expressed whether even he had anything to do with the Epistoke. In the composition of the second part (published in 1519), after Ulrich von Hutten, Erotus. Rubcanus had the most considerable share.. The circumstance of the Epistoke being placed in the catalogue of forbidden hook8 by a papal bull; helped to spread it not a,.
little. Among the numerous editions of the work (1643, 1703, 1827, etc.), the best is that by B8cking (1858; 2d ed. 1864). See D. F. Strauss's nick, vow Ilutten.