Library › Latin: Letters › Epistolae ad Henricum Bullingerum
In this letter of 1546, divided into four sections, Peter Medmann writes to Heinrich Bullinger from the service of the archbishop-elector of Cologne. He explains that his countryman and old friend Gerard Westerburg delivered Bullinger’s letter seven months earlier and spoke of Bullinger’s goodwill toward him, which pleased him greatly, since he had long admired Bullinger’s writings. Later he describes his work: since what the elector carries out through him benefits the church and the state, he accepts being occupied in business at the cost of his studies, and will continue to promote the reformation begun there, which would have advanced further but for the emperor Charles’s hostility to the elector.
The elector was Hermann von Wied, archbishop of Cologne, whose attempt to introduce the Reformation into his territory was defeated by imperial and papal opposition, leading to his excommunication and resignation in 1547. Medmann’s letter is a contemporary witness from inside that attempt, showing its supporters’ hopes and their awareness of the emperor’s hostility. It also shows Bullinger’s interest in the reform movement in the Rhineland.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Corpus Corporum, the Latin text repository of the University of Zurich (edition: Institut für Schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte, Institut für Computerlinguistik, Universität Zürich. The online edition is based on the cited book…), reused with attribution for non-commercial purposes (CC BY-NC-SA). Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.