Johannes Cuspinian

A leading scholar, he was the author of De Caesaribus et Imperatoribus and was also given a poet's laurel wreath by Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor. He was part of an intellectual circle that included Joachim Vadianus and Stiborius. He rendered important service as the discoverer and editor of classical and medieval historical texts. His unfinished Austria (1527-8) was an important historical-geographical regional survey of Lower Austria.

Johannes Cuspinian studied at Leipzig University, University of Würzburg and University of Vienna. The recorded working language is Latin and German. Residence is recorded at Vienna. Employment is recorded with University of Vienna, Maximilian I and Charles V. Positions recorded include rector.

In 1490 he matriculated at the University of Leipzig, went to the University of Vienna (1493) to continue his humanistic studies, and in 1494 entered there on a course of medicine. At this early age he edited the "Liber Hymnorum" of Prudentius, and made a reputation by his lectures on Virgil, Horace, Sallust, and Cicero. He was acquainted with Emperor Frederick III. In 1493, in reward for a panegyric on the life of St. Leopold of Austria, he was crowned as poet laureate and received the title of Master of Arts from Maximilian. Soon after this he was made a doctor of medicine, and in 1500 rector of the university.

Maximilian made him his confidential councillor and appointed him curator of the university for life. Cuspinian also received the position of chief librarian of the Imperial Library, and superintendent of the archives of the imperial family. As curator of the university, he exercised great influence on its development, although he was not able to prevent the decline caused by the political and religious disturbances of the second decade of the sixteenth century. He was on terms of friendship with the most noted humanists and scholars; the calling of his friend Conrad Celtes to Vienna is especially due to him. Celtes and he were the heading spirits of the literary association called the "Sodalitas Litterarum Danubiana". In 1515, Cuspinian was prefect of the city of Vienna. Emperor Maximilian, also Charles V at a later date, sent him on numerous diplomatic missions to Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland. He brought about a settlement of the disputed succession between the Habsburg line and the King of Hungary and Bohemia; another of his missions was to accompany Bona Sforza, the bride of King Sigismund of Poland, to Kraków. As a diplomat, he served as an envoy to Poland and Hungary and orchestrated the Habsburg and Jagellonian marriage alliance of 1515. In 1515, Sigismund I of Poland entered an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. In return for Maximilian lending weight to the provisions of the 2nd Peace of Thorn, Sigismund consented to the marriage of the children of Vladislaus II, his brother, to the grandchildren of Maximilian. Through this double marriage contract, Bohemia and Hungary passed to the House of Habsburg in 1526, on the death of Sigismund's nephew, Louis II – a result of enormous importance for later central and eastern European history for centuries to come.

Cuspinianus is buried in Vienna's Stephansdom.