EPIS'TOL. OB'SCURO'RUM VIRO'RUM (Lat., 'Letters of Obscure Alen'). The title of a collection of satirical letters which appeared at llagenau in 1515, professing to be issued by the Aldine Press at Venice. It purported to be the composition of certain ecclesiastics and professors in Cologne and other places in Rhenish Germany. The letters were directed against the scholastics and monks, and helped in no small degree to bring about the Reformation. The controversy of Reuchlin (q.v.) with the baptized Jew Pfef ferko•n concerning the books of the Jews gave the first occasion to the Epistolic, and probably their title was suggested by the letters to himself from distinguished men which Reuchlin published, under the title Viro•um Epistolic Clarorum ad Reuehlinum Phoreensem (1514), to show that his position in this controversy was approved by the learned. The Epistolw Obseurorum were ad dressed to Ortuinns Gratius in Deventer, who had made himself odious to the liberal minds of the time by his arrogant pretension, his determined hostility to the spirit of the age, and his lax morality. On the first appearance of the work it
was ascribed to Reuchlin, afterwards to Reuchlin, Erasmus, and Hutten. The first part contained 41 letters, a number which was increased in subsequent editions. It was probably mainly the composition of the distinguished humanist Ero tus Rubeanus, who originated the idea. In the composition of the second part (1519) Ulrich von Mitten had much share, but others partici pated, including Erotus. The Epistolic were placed in the catalogue of forbidden books by a PapaI bull, and this circumstance contributed not a little to spread the work. The classical edi tion is that by Wicking, Supplementum Ulriei Ilutteni Ope•um, vols. vi., vii. (Leipzig, 1864-70). There is A German translation by Binder (Stutt gart, 1876). Consult: Strauss, Ulrich ron Hut ten (6th ed., Leipzig. 1895), of which there is an English translation (London, 1S74) ; and Pat tison, Essays (Oxford. 1889).