Georg Fabricius (23 April 1516 – 17 July 1571), born Georg Goldschmidt, was a

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

German

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

and archaeologist who wrote in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

during the German Renaissance.

Life

Fabricius was born in Chemnitz in

Saxony Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...

and educated at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...

. Travelling in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

with one of his pupils, he made an exhaustive study of the antiquities of

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

. He published the results in his ''Roma'' (1550), in which the correspondence between every discoverable relic of the old city and the references to them in ancient literature was traced in detail. In 1546 he was appointed rector of Saint Afra in Meissen. In 1549 Fabricius edited the first short selection of Roman inscriptions focusing specifically on legal texts. This was a key moment in the history of classical epigraphy: for the first time in print a humanist explicitly demonstrated the value of such archaeological remains for the discipline of law, and implicitly accorded texts inscribed in stone as authoritative a status as those recorded in manuscripts. In his sacred poems he affected to avoid every word with the slightest savour of paganism; and he blamed the poets for their allusions to pagan divinities. He encouraged music at his school, although he was not himself a musician. Some of his writings were set to music by composers such as Martin Agricola,

Johann Walter Johann Walter, also known as ''Johann Walther'' or ''Johannes Walter'' (original name: ''Johann Blankenmüller'') (1496 – 25 March 1570) was a Lutheran composer and poet during the Reformation period. Life Walter was born in Kahla, in present-d ...

Mattheus Le Maistre Mattheus Le Maistre or Matthaeus Le Maistre ( 1505–1577) was a Flemish Renaissance choirmaster and composerPratt p. 131 who is best known for his time in Dresden. His music was superior but in no way progressive, influential in both Counter-Ref ...

Antonio Scandello Antonio Scandello (January 17, 1517 – January 18, 1580) was an Italian composer, born in Bergamo. He worked as musician at the court of the Electors of Saxony in Dresden. In 1549 he became court-bandmaster, and in 1568 Kapellmeister succeedin ...

, and . Fabricius died at Meissen.

Works

Principal works: *editions of

Terence Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a Roman African playwright during the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 166–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought ...

(1548),

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...

(1551) and Horace (1555, apud H. Petrum) *''Roma'' (1550) *''Poëmatum sacrorum libri xxv.'' (1560) *''Poëtarum veterum ecclesiasticorum opera Christiana'' (1562) *''De Re Poëtica libri septem'' (1565) *''Rerum Misnicarum libri septem'' (1569)

Famous Quote

From: ''In Praise of Georgius Agricola''
"Death comes to all
But great achievements raise a monument
Which shall endure until the sun grows old." Posthumous: *''Originum I illustrissimae stirpis Saxonicae libri septem'' (1597) *''Rerum Germaniae magnae et Saxoniae universae memorabilium mirabiliumque volumina duo'' (1609). A life of Georg Fabricius was published in 1839 by D. C. W. Baumgarten-Crusius, who in 1845 also issued an edition of Fabricius's ''Epistolae ad W Meurerum et alios aequales'', with a short sketch ''De Vita Ge. Fabricius de gente Fabriciorum''; see also F. Wachter in Ersch and Gruber's ''Allgemeine Encyclopädie''.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fabricius, Georg 1516 births 1571 deaths Archaeologists from Leipzig 16th-century German historians German poets German Protestants People from Chemnitz People from the Electorate of Saxony German male poets German male non-fiction writers 16th-century antiquarians