Sixt (or Sixtus) Birck, as Xystus Betuleius (February 24, 1501 – June 19, 1554) was a German humanist of

Augsburg Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ...

, "a notable German scholar of the New Learning". At the end of his schooling in Augsburg the

Protestant Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and ...

began. He continued his theological studies at

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 ...

Tübingen Tübingen (, , Swabian: ''Dibenga'') is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in three ...

and

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...

before returning to Augsburg as director (''Magister'') of the ''Gymnasium''.

Works

His theatrical output is in both German and Latin: in Basel he produced a wide variety of German theater pieces with a Reformation subtext; in Augsburg he wrote a notable series of pedological school dramas in Latin, designed for student presentation and intended to improve morality and Latin alike. Among his numerous plays in Latin are ''Susanna'', (Augsburg 1537; Zurich 1538), originally written in German but recast in Latin so as to make an essentially new play; ''De vera nobilitate'', a dramatized version of Buonaccorso da Montemagno's ''Dialogus de nobilitate'' concerning meritocracy and the inherent virtues of the nobility, recast by Betuleius in play form, still in Latin, and published at Augsburg in 1538; and ''Sapientia Solomonis'' ("the Wisdom of Solomon"), published at

in 1547; an adapted version was acted before Queen Elizabeth and Princess Cecilia of Sweden in their common language,

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 ...

, 17 January 1565.(Sixt Birck), Elizabeth Rogers Payne, editor, ''Sapientia Solomonis. Acted before the Queen by the Boys of Westminster School January 17, 1565/6'' (Yale University Press/Oxford University Press) 1938. Other Latin plays by Birck are direct translations of his German plays. In 1545 Betuleius published at Basel an edition of eight books of the Sibylline oracles with a preface dating from perhaps the sixth century. As a

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

, he made his mark with the first Greek concordance to the

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chri ...

which he published at Basel in 1546.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Birck, Sixt (Betuleius) German Renaissance humanists 1554 deaths 1501 births People from Augsburg German dramatists and playwrights