'Little is known about Benedict Curipeschitz. He was born around 1490 in Oberburg in Southern Styria, modern Gornji Grad in Slovenia. Although he was of Slovenian origin, he regarded himself as a citizen of the German Holy Roman Empire: in his Itinerarium he remarks that he and his companions in Constantinople missed nothing ‘except for our German freedom’ (das unns nichts abganngen, dann allain unnser Teutsche freyheit, ed. Neweklowsky, p. 79).

In 1508 Curipechitz was enrolled at the University of Vienna, and in 1525 he appears as a notary public in Laibach (modern Ljubljana). He was proficient in Slovenian, German and also Latin, which he probably learnt at the diocesan collegiate chapter at Oberburg, which had been established after 1473 when the monastery was closed by Pope Sixtus IV.

It is most likely that his language skills led to his appointment as an interpreter as part of a diplomatic mission sent by King Ferdinand I of Hungary to the Ottoman Sultan Süleyman I in 1530, immediately after the first Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529. Further details of his life after the return of the mission to Germany on 2 February 1531, and the date of his death are unknown.

Curipechitz left two works, the Itinerarium and the Disputation."

Küçükhüseyin, Sevket. ‘Benedict Curipeschitz’. Christian-Muslim Relations 1500 - 1900. Ed. David Thomas et al. Brill Reference Online. Web. 8 Aug. 2019.