Humanist Library in Selestat Alsace France. Bibliotheque Blue sky, sunny. 098644_Selestat
Sélestat is located in central Alsace, 22 km north of Colmar and 47 km south of Strasbourg, on the left bank of the Ill River. Sélestat is near the Alsace wine route, and other notable sites such as the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg. The city is one of the richest and most varied in terms of architecture among the smaller cities of Alsace. Most remarkable are the romanesque church Sainte-Foy and the gothic St. George's Church, the baroque clock tower (1618) and the neo-mediæval water tower. Buildings like the town hall (1788), the railway station (1880s) and the synagogue (1890s), as well as several Renaissance and Baroque civil houses are similarly noteworthy. The Humanist Library displays one of the oldest and most homogenous collection of medieval manuscripts and Renaissance books in Europe. Its core is the still almost intact library of Beatus Rhenanus, that had been bequeathed to the city and kept by it ever since. In 1441, the municipal authorities of Sélestat appointed Ludwig Dringenberg, born in Westphalia, to be the leader of the local Latin school. The appointment proved to be a stroke of luck. Dringenberg turned out to be a gifted and committed educator, who had an open attitude toward intellectual trends of the time. Under his leadership emerged the first school on the Upper Rhine where Humanist thinking was fostered. His successors, Kraft Hofman (1477-1501), Hieronymus Gebwiler (1501-1509) and Hans Sapidus (1510-1525), knew how to increase the reputation of the school still further. Thus, the school was the training place of an entire generation of Alsatian Humanists. The school also had a library which steadily grew in extent through endowments and gifts (from Jakob Wimpfeling of Sélestat, among others). Beatus Rhenanus bequeathed his entire private library to his home city of Sélestat. This library contained about 670 bound leather volumes at the time of this death in 1547, which Rhenanus had collected during his studies and his work .
Size: 3744px × 5101px
Location: Selestat alsace France
Photo credit: © Daniel Valla FRPS / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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Keywords: alsace, alsatian, architecture, beatus, building, church, destination, east, eastern, france, french, holiday, oeil, region, rhenanus, selestat, tourism, tourist, travel, trompe, vacation, wine
