Paulus Melissus (also: ''Paul Melissus,'' ''Paul Schede'', or ''Paulus Schedius Melissus''; 20 December 1539 – 3 February 1602) was a

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "human ...

Neo-Latin New Latin (also called Neo-Latin or Modern Latin) is the revival of Literary Latin used in original, scholarly, and scientific works since about 1500. Modern scholarly and technical nomenclature, such as in zoological and botanical taxonomy ...

writer, translator and composer.

Life

Melissus was born in

Mellrichstadt Mellrichstadt is a town in the district Rhön-Grabfeld, in Bavaria, Germany. It is situated 17 km southwest of Meiningen, and 13 km northeast of Bad Neustadt Bad Neustadt an der Saale, officially Bad Neustadt a. d. Saale and often sim ...

. He studied and attended school in

Zwickau Zwickau (; is, with around 87,500 inhabitants (2020), the fourth-largest city of Saxony after Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz and it is the seat of the Zwickau District. The West Saxon city is situated in the valley of the Zwickau Mulde (German: ...

from 1557 to 1559, and studied philology in

Erfurt Erfurt () is the capital and largest city in the Central German state of Thuringia. It is located in the wide valley of the Gera river (progression: ), in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest. It sits i ...

and

Jena Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a po ...

. From 1560 to 1564 he lived in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, where in 1561 he became

poet laureate A poet laureate (plural: poets laureate) is a poet officially appointed by a government or conferring institution, typically expected to compose poems for special events and occasions. Albertino Mussato of Padua and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch ...

. He stayed in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...

Wittenberg Wittenberg ( , ; Low Saxon: ''Wittenbarg''; meaning ''White Mountain''; officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg (''Luther City Wittenberg'')), is the fourth largest town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Wittenberg is situated on the River Elbe, north o ...

and

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

, and was called to the court of the bishop of

Würzburg Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is a city in the region of Franconia in the north of the German state of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the ''Regierungsbezirk'' Lower Franconia. It spans the banks of the Main River. Würzburg ...

and went on a campaign to

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

with him. He was an ambassador in the service of Emperor Maximilian II and

Rudolf II Rudolf II (18 July 1552 – 20 January 1612) was Holy Roman Emperor (1576–1612), King of Hungary and Croatia (as Rudolf I, 1572–1608), King of Bohemia (1575–1608/1611) and Archduke of Austria (1576–1608). He was a member of the Hous ...

, and traveled to France, Switzerland, Italy, and England and was ultimately director of the Electoral library (the Bibliotheca Palatina) in Heidelberg, where he died. Melissus translated works of

Clément Marot Clément Marot (23 November 1496 – 12 September 1544) was a French Renaissance poet. Biography Youth Marot was born at Cahors, the capital of the province of Quercy, some time during the winter of 1496–1497. His father, Jean Marot (c.& ...

and

Théodore de Bèze Theodore Beza ( la, Theodorus Beza; french: Théodore de Bèze or ''de Besze''; June 24, 1519 – October 13, 1605) was a French Calvinist Protestant theologian, reformer and scholar who played an important role in the Protestant Reformation ...

for the

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...

church services in rhyme using the

Psalm The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived f ...

s in German. He was the first to use the sonnet and the ''

terza rima ''Terza rima'' (, also , ; ) is a rhyming verse form, in which the poem, or each poem-section, consists of tercets (three line stanzas) with an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme: The last word of the second line in one tercet provides the rh ...

'' in German lyric. In his lifetime he was recognized as an author fully versed in Latin love poetry.

Works

*''Cantiones'', poems (1566) *''Psalmen Davids'' (1572) *''Schediasmata'', poems (1574) *''Schediasmatum reliquiae'', poems (1575) *''Epigrammata'' (1580) *''Odae Palatinae'' (1588) *''Meletemata'', poems (1595)

Literature

* * *Fritz Roth, Restlose Auswertungen von Leichenpredigten für genealogische und kulturhistorische Zwecke. Bd. 5 R 4941 *Wolfgang Klose: Das Wittenberger Gelehrtenstammbuch: das Stammbuch von Abraham Ulrich (1549-1577) und David Ulrich (1580-1623), Halle: Mitteldt. Verl., 1999,

External links

Picture of Paulus Melissus
1539 births 1602 deaths German classical composers German librarians Renaissance composers 16th-century Latin-language writers Imperial counts palatine German male writers German male classical composers {{Germany-composer-stub