Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg

The father was killed by a hunting-accident when Geiler was three years old; and his grandfather took charge of the education of the child, sending him to the school at Ammerschwihr, near Kaysersberg, where his mother lived.

A living interest in theological subjects, awakened by the study of Jean Gerson, led him to the University of Basel in May 1471, recently founded at that time.

This led the cathedral chapter, the bishop (then Albert of Palatinate-Mosbach) and the city authorities to prefer having a secular priest as a permanent preacher.

The beautiful pulpit erected for him in 1481 in the nave of the cathedral, when the chapel of Saint Lawrence had proved too small, still bears witness to the popularity he enjoyed as a preacher in the immediate sphere of his labors, and the testimonies of Sebastian Brant, Beatus Rhenanus, Johann Reuchlin, Philipp Melanchthon and others show how great had been the influence of his personal character.

[4] He frequently visited Friedrich von Hohenzollern, Bishop of Augsburg, who was very friendly to him; once he was called to Füssen on the river Lech by his patron the Emperor Maximilian, who desired his advice.

At Einsiedeln in Switzerland he met the Blessed Nikolaus of Flüe, who was even then well known; another time he journeyed to Sainte-Baume, near Marseilles, in order to pray in the grotto of St. Mary Magdalen.

A kidney trouble developed, to relieve which he was obliged to annually visit the hot springs of Baden; dropsy finally appeared, and he died on Lætare Sunday 1510 in Strasbourg.

He prepared himself with great care for the pulpit, writing out his sermons beforehand, as his contemporary Beatus Rhenanus reports; those preparatory compositions were drawn up not in German, but in Latin.

His thoughts were expressed in the language of ordinary life: Geiler's writings are a source for the knowledge of the speech, customs and beliefs of the common people at the beginning of the sixteenth century.