Ulrich von Hutten

Timeline

1. 1505–1514Cologne to Pavia · Holy Roman EmpireHutten was born near Steckelberg Castle and in his youth was sent to Fulda Abbey; after leaving in 1505 he drifted among several universities. In Italy he encountered legal scholarship and humanist polemics and formed a lasting hostility toward papal politics, laying the groundwork for his later satirical writing and anti-Roman propaganda.
2. 1515–1517Augsburg · SwabiaHutten was the principal author of the second volume of Letters of Obscure Men, satirizing scholasticism and the Dominicans in the guise of monks. In 1517 Maximilian I crowned him poet laureate at Augsburg, confirming his dual identity as knight and man of letters.
3. 1519–1521Ebernburg · Rhineland-PalatinateIn 1519 Hutten left the court of the Elector of Mainz and openly sided with Luther. In 1520 he published polemical works in Latin and German, including Vadiscus (the Roman Trinity); pursued by the papacy, he took refuge in September of that year at Sickingen's Ebernburg. During the Diet of Worms, imperial envoys went to the castle to meet him and Sickingen.
4. 1522–1523Ufenau Island · ZurichHutten incited and joined Sickingen's knights' revolt against the Archbishop of Trier. After its failure he fled to Switzerland; in Basel he failed to gain Erasmus's protection and was finally settled by Zwingli on Ufenau Island in Lake Zurich, where he died in poverty and illness in August 1523.