Birth and early life
Pre-1439 record. Sparse; the documentary chain begins with the Padua doctorate.
Hartlieb's birth year c. 1410 is inferred from the Padua doctorate date (11 May 1439) and the standard age at doctorate in the Padua medical faculty. Birthplace is probably Bavaria, not directly attested in a contemporary document; inferred from later Wittelsbach service and German vernacular work.
| Birth year | c. 1410. Inferred from the Padua doctorate date (11 May 1439) and the standard age at doctorate in the Padua medical faculty. |
|---|---|
| Birthplace | Probably Bavaria. Not directly attested in a contemporary document; inferred from later Wittelsbach service and German vernacular work. |
| 1434 Salzburg — earliest primary document | Hartlieb appears in the Salzburg records 20–23 March 1434. Primary source: Staatsarchiv Nürnberg, Rep. 2b, Nr. 873n and Nr. 874. This is the earliest dated primary document placing Hartlieb in the archival record, five years before the Padua doctorate. |
| Pre-Padua education | Not documented beyond the 1434 Salzburg appearance. Vernacular literacy in German and Latin reading competence are inferred from the surviving works. |
Padua doctorate (1439)
The 11 May 1439 Padua promotion is documentary-attested in the Padua Acta graduum academicorum tradition. The identification of that promotand with the Münchner Hartlieb of the literary corpus is a Fürbeth 1992 prosopographic reconstruction — chained from "Sohn eines H. de Meglingen" in the Promotionsakte to a 1414 Wien matriculation — rather than a primary documentary identification (cf. Dicke, ZfdA 122 (1993), 116). Cermisone and Montagnana were the dominant figures in the Padua medical faculty during Hartlieb's student years; "teaching chain" overstates "contemporary cohort" without student-list evidence.
| Date |
11 May 1439.
![München, BSB, Cgm 7958, fol. 9r colophon (BSB-MDZ surrogate). Hartlieb's own 1456 self-naming as 'doctor medic[us]' is the load-bearing internal evidence for his 1439 Padua doctorate.](assets/img/cgm7958_authorship_p21.jpg)
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|---|---|
| Institution | Università di Padova, Faculty of Medicine. |
| Degree | Doctor medicinae (full doctorate, not the lesser licentia). |
| Contemporary cohort | Antonio Cermisone (professor at Padua 1413–1441) and Bartolomeo da Montagnana (1422–1452) are the two dominant figures in the Padua medical faculty during Hartlieb's student years. Both produced influential Consilia collections that shaped the next generation of court physicians. Whether Hartlieb was a direct student of Cermisone or Montagnana — as distinct from a member of their teaching cohort — is not established by primary documentary evidence; the substrate carries this as a cohort claim, not a personal teacher-student chain. |
| Cohort supply line | Padua-trained court physicians of the 1430s–1440s formed the principal supply line for German and Central European court medical posts in the decades that followed. |
Wittelsbach court service (1441–1468)
First documented at the Wittelsbach court c. 1441. Service spans three generations of princes across the Munich (Oberbayern), Landshut (Niederbayern), and Ingolstadt branches of the dynasty.
The earliest composition date attached to a Hartlieb-attributed work is the 1434/35 Mondwahrsagebuch "von Dr. J. H. in Wien" recorded in two surviving witnesses (per Dicke, ZfdA 122 (1993), 116, citing Fürbeth 1992); the relevant manuscripts are themselves posthumous copies (after 1468) and the attribution may be a retrospective title-Beilegung by editors. Wien ÖNB Cod. 3062 has been associated with the early Hartlieb tradition (Handschriftencensus-dated c. 1437), but the substrate's own dissection of Cod. 3062 identifies the carried content as a Kriegsbuch, not the Namenmantik; the 1437 dating-source (witness-internal colophon vs catalogue paleography) and the carried-content attribution both remain open to verification. By c. 1441 Hartlieb is first documented at the Munich court of Albrecht III, Duke of Bavaria-Munich. Across the 1440s–1450s he served Ludwig IX (der Reiche) of Bavaria-Landshut, and the Landshut court is the densest period for compositional output. In 1455–1456 Cgm 7958 was compiled — an iatromathematical onomatomantic engine + 28-mansiones-lunae apparatus + world-alphabet inventory + computus/sanctorale colophon, archivist annotation Anno 1456. Through the 1460s service continued into the reign of Albrecht IV of Bavaria-Munich, Ludwig IV (Pfalzgraf bei Rhein), and Heinrich XVI of Bavaria-Landshut. Death on 18 May 1468.
Diplomatic missions
Hartlieb served as part of diplomatic embassies for the Wittelsbach princes on several occasions. The mission list below is partial and source-lock varies entry by entry.
| 1446 · Ferrara | Mission to the Este court at Ferrara. Date and details currently route through secondary literature; direct verification requires retrieval of Fürbeth 1992. |
|---|---|
| 1447 · Heidelberg | Mission to the Palatinate court at Heidelberg. Documented in the Wittelsbach diplomatic record. |
| 1456 · Brandenburg-Kulmbach | Mission to the Hohenzollern court at Kulmbach. Same calendar year as the Cgm 7958 compilation. |
Works produced during court service
Twelve works attributed to Hartlieb across the period 1440s–1460s. The full register, with attribution status and primary witness for each, sits in the corpus record.
The output divides into three working clusters. The iatromathematics-and-divination cluster gathers the Mondwahrsagebuch, Onomatomancia, Buch aller verbotenen Kunst, Chiromancy, and Namenmantik — working apparatuses for prognostic and divinatory practice in a court medical context. The medicine-and-gynaecology cluster gathers the Kräuterbuch (herbal), Buch Trotula, and the Secreta mulierum translation, with the Kräuterbuch as the most heavily witnessed work in the corpus. The Latin-literary-translation cluster gathers the Alexander romance, the Andreas Capellanus translation, Buch von der Minne, the Historia de Preliis, and the Ovid translations.
Several attributions in the corpus are tradition-attributed rather than colophon-attested. The corpus register carries those distinctions per work; this biographical surface does not collapse them.
Death (1468)
Hartlieb died on 18 May 1468. The date is firm.
| Date of death | 18 May 1468. |
|---|---|
| Place of death | Bavaria. Specific location not currently locked in this draft. |
| After death | His works continued to circulate in manuscript through the late 15th century and entered the early-print transmission for the Kräuterbuch and the Buch aller verbotenen Kunst. |
Sources for this record
Authorities consulted for the biographical entries above, with source-lock status per entry.
Primary documents (directly retrieved). Staatsarchiv Nürnberg, Rep. 2b, Nr. 873n and Nr. 874 (20–23 March 1434), the earliest primary document; Wittelsbach court documents in the Munich and Landshut chancery records (sampled); and the Cgm 7958 colophon, fol. 9, carrying the self-attestation.
Mediated documents (well-attested, direct retrieval pending). The Padua doctorate register entry, 11 May 1439 (cited via Dicke 1993 → Fürbeth 1992 → Zonta/Brotto; Antenore Acta graduum academicorum not yet directly retrieved). Wien, ÖNB, Cod. 3062 (Handschriftencensus-dated 1437; witness-internal vs catalogue-dated source-lock pending verification), carrying the Namenmantik tract within a sammelhandschrift that also includes a Kriegsbuch.
Secondary scholarship. Fürbeth 1992, the monograph on Hartlieb (direct retrieval pending; cited via secondary literature in this draft); Hayer & Schnell 2010, the critical edition of the Kräuterbuch with Berlin mgq 2021 as base text; and the standard reference works on the Padua medical faculty around Cermisone and Montagnana.
Last updated 2026-05-23.