There is no doubt that the personality of Odysseus developed out of some germ in primitive religious myth; but it is almost hopeless to seek for the early form, so completely has it been transformed. In many heroes of poetry and mythology the chief interest lies in tracing the growth of the conception from the divine form of early religion to the Greek hero of poetry; but in the case of Odysseus the supreme interest attaches to the perfect form as it appears in Homer, the typical representative of the old sailor-race whose adventurous voyages educated and moulded the Hellenic race. The period when the character of Odysseus grew among the Ionian bards was when the Ionian ships were beginning to penetrate to the farthest shores of the Black Sea, and to the western side of Italy, but when Egypt had not yet been freely opened to foreign intercourse by Psammetichus and his successors. The tale of Odysseus gives us the form in which the voyages, the perils, the strange races of foreign lands, and the rich spoils of the sailors were mirrored in the minds of the nation and sung by its poets.

OeCOLAMPADIUS, John (1482-1531), was born at Weinsberg, a small town in the north of the modern kingdom of Würtemberg, but then belonging to the Palatinate. He went to school at Weinsberg and Heilbronn, and when twelve years old entered the university of Heidelberg, where he took his bachelor’s degree in 1501. He seems at first to have intended to study for the profession of law, and went to Bologna, but soon returned to Heidelberg and betook himself to theology. He became a zealous student of the new learning and passed from the study of Greek to that of Hebrew. He went from Heidelberg to Tübingen, and thence to Stuttgart, making the acquaintance of Erasmus, Hedio, and Reuchlin, and after some earlier essays in preaching became pastor at Basel in 1515, serving under Christopher von Uttenheim, the evangelical bishop of Basel. From the beginning the sermons of Oecolampadius had “Christ the crucified” as their theme, and his first reformatory zeal showed itself in a protest against the introduction of legends of the saints into Easter sermons. While in Basel, preaching did not absorb all his energies; he was in daily intercourse with learned friends at the university, and pursued his literary researches and humanist studies. In 1518 he published his Greek Grammar. The same year he was asked to become pastor in the high church in Augsburg. Germany was then ablaze with the questions raised by Luther’s theses, and his introduction into this new world seems to have compelled Oecolampadius to severe self-examination, which ended in his entering a convent and becoming a monk. A short experiénee sufficed to convince him that the monkish was not the ideal Christian life (amisi monachum, inveni Christianum), for in the beginning of 1522 he became private chaplain to the famous Franz von Sickingen. He left his service in the end of the same year and returned to Basel. Zwingli’s famous disputation at Zurich (in 1523) fired the minds of many in Switzerland, and among others stirred Oecolampadius to make a more decided stand for reformation. He began to imitate Zwingli and preach Reformed doctrine. To his surprise he found that the humanists of the university did not countenance him in his zeal for evangelical truth. When “disputations” were held, they prohibited the students and teachers from attending. After more than a year of earnest preaching, after four public disputations had been held, in which the popular verdict had been given in favour of Oecolampadius and his friends, the authorities of Basel began to see the necessity of some reformation. They began with the convents, and Oecolampadius was able to refrain in public worship on certain festival days from some practices he believed to be superstitious. Basel was slow to accept the Reformation; the news of the Peasants’ War and the inroads of Anabaptists prevented progress; but at last, in 1525, it seemed as if the authorities were resolved to listen to schemes for restoring the purity of worship and teaching. In the midst of these hopes and difficulties Oecolampadius married, in the beginning of 1528, Wilibrandis Rosenblatt, the widow of Ludwig Keller, who proved to be non rixosa vel garrula vel vaga, he says, and made him a good wife. After his death she married Capito, and, when Capito died, Bucer. She died in 1564. In 1528 the mass and image worship were at last abolished by authority, and Oecolampadius’s five years’ struggle was ended. He lived on, growing in influence in Basel and throughout south Germany, three years longer, and died in November 1531.

(Ecolampadius was not a great theologian, like Luther, Zwingli, or Calvin, and yet he was a trusted theological leader. With Zwingli he represented the Swiss views at the unfortunate conference at Marburg, and had proved himself, by his defence of Zwingli’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper against both Brenz and Luther, an able controversialist. He was a man of very wide sympathies. His readiness to sympathize with the early Reformatory movements in France and his eager welcome of the Waldenses were of great value to the Swiss Church.

Compare Herzog, Leben, Joh. Oecolampads u. die Reformation der Kirche zu Basel, 1843; Hagenbach, Johann Oecolampad u. Oswald Myconius, die Reformatoren Basels, 1859.