Hardwin von Grätz[1] (French: Hardouin de Graes),[2] better known in English as Ortwin (Latin: Ortuinus Gratius;[3] 1475 – 22 May 1542), was a German humanist scholar and theologian.
He supplemented his salary by proofing documents for the Quentell printing house and wrote introductions and poetic dedications in the volumes of classical authors of the Middle Ages.
Because Ortwin sided with the Cologne University theologians and the Dominicans during the Reuchlin controversy, he found himself the subject of aggressive attacks from Hermann von dem Busche and the younger generation who were not pleased with his translations of the Jewish convert, Johannes Pfefferkorn.
[6] His adversaries succeeded in vilifying him on both moral and scientific grounds, denouncing his Latin and Greek scholarship and portraying him as a drunkard and worse.
[4][5] His magnum opus was the Little Collection of Things to Be Sought & Things to Be Avoided (Latin: Fasciculus Rerum Expetendarum & Fugiendarum),[7] a collection of 66 more or less weighty letters and treatises by various authors on ecclesiastical and secular history, dogma and canon law, compiled to expose the noxious elements in the Church's organism and to prepare a way for a future council to remedy them.