Aventinus (Thurmair) Johannes

Johannes Aventinus was the son of an innkeeper in Abensberg, Lower Bavaria. He attended the local school of the Carmelite monastery and matriculated at the University of Ingolstadt in 1495. In 1496 he received the lower orders and pursued his humanistic studies in Vienna, Cracow and Paris. In 1517 he was appointed tutor to the dukes Louis and Ernest of Bavaria and was named historiographer to the dukes of Bavaria. His Annales Boiorum were severely anticlerical and thus unsuited for publication under the auspices of the Catholic dukes, and the Church set them on the Index. Not until 1554 was an expurgated version of the Annales published at Ingolstadt. Later in his life Aventinus continued to work on a chronicle of all Germany, of which, however, only the first book and an index were completed. He spent the rest of his life in the free imperial city of Regensburg, which remained aloof when the dukes of Bavaria began to repress all Lutheran tendencies. All of Aventinus' works were put on the Venetian Index in 1554.