Title page of Historia universalis breviter ac perspicue exposita by Christoph Cellarius

Christoph (Keller) Cellarius (22 November 1638 – 4 June 1707) was a German

classical scholar Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

from

Schmalkalden Schmalkalden () is a town in the Schmalkalden-Meiningen district, in the southwest of the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is on the southern slope of the Thuringian Forest at the Schmalkalde river, a tributary to the Werra. , the town had a popul ...

who held positions in

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...

and Halle. Although the Ancient-Medieval-Modern division of history was used earlier by Italian

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...

scholars

Leonardo Bruni Leonardo Bruni (or Leonardo Aretino; c. 1370 – March 9, 1444) was an Italian humanist, historian and statesman, often recognized as the most important humanist historian of the early Renaissance. He has been called the first modern historian. ...

and

Flavio Biondo Flavio Biondo (Latin Flavius Blondus) (1392 – June 4, 1463) was an Italian Renaissance humanist historian. He was one of the first historians to use a three-period division of history (Ancient, Medieval, Modern) and is known as one of the f ...

, Cellarius' ''Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, and New Period'' helped popularize it. After him, this tripartite division became standard. The library of the University of Applied Sciences in Schmalkalden bears his name, it is called the "Cellarius Bibliothek", in honor of Cellarius.

Bibliography

* Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ''Memoirs of Goethe''
''Cellarius''
Printed for Henry Colburn (London), 1824.

Bibliography

See also