INTRODUCTION.

BIOGRAPHY.

EORGIUS AGRICOLA was bom at Glauchau, inSaxony, on March 24th, 1494, and therefore enteredthe world when it was still upon the threshold of theRenaissance ; Gutenberg’s first book had been print-ed but forty years before; the Humanists had butbegun that stimulating criticism which awoke theReformation; Erasmus, of Rotterdam, who was sub-sequently to become Agricola’s friend and patron,was just completing his student days. The Refor-mation itself was yet to come, but it was not long delayed, for Lutherwas bom the year before Agricola, and through him Agricola’s home-land became the cradle of the great movement; nor did Agricola escape beingdrawn into the conflict. Italy, already awake with the new classical revival, wasstill a busy workshop of antiquarian research, translation, study, andpublication, and through her the Greek and Latin Classics were onlynow available for wide distribution. Students from the rest of Europe,among them at a later time Agricola himself, flocked to the ItalianUniversities, and on their return infected their native cities with the newly-awakened learning. At Agricola’s birth Columbus had just returned from hisgreat discovery, and it was only three years later that Vasco Da Gama roundedCape Good Hope. Thus these two foremost explorers had only initiatedthat greatest period of geographical expansion in the world’s history. A fewdates will recall how far this exploration extended during Agricola’s lifetime.Balboa first saw the Pacific in 1513 ; Cortes entered the City of Mexico in1520 ; Magellan entered the Pacific in the same year ; Pizarro penetratedinto Pern in 1528 ; De Soto landed in Florida in 1539, and Potosi was dis-covered in 1546. Omitting the sporadic settlement on the St. Lawrence byCartier in 1541, the settlement of North America did not begin for a quarterof a century after Agricola’s death. Thus the revival of learning, with itstrain of Humanism, the Reformation, its stimulation of exploration and there-awakening of the arts and sciences, was still in its infancy with Agricola.

We know practically nothing of Agricola’s antecedents or his youth. Hisreal name was Georg Bauer (“ peasant ”), and it was probably Latinized byhis teachers, as was the custom of the time. His own brother, in receipts

x For the biographical information here set out we have relied principally upon thefollowing works :—Petrus Albinus, Meissnische Land Und Berg Chronica, Dresden, 1590 ;Adam Daniel Richter, Umstdndliche. . . . Chronica der Stadt Chemnitz, Leipzig, 1754 ;

Johann Gottfried Weller, Altes Aus Allen Theilen Der Geschichte, Chemnitz, 1766;Freidrich August Schmid, Georg Agrikola’s Bermannus, Freiberg, 1806 ; Georg HeinrichJacobi, Der Mineralog Geo.gius Agricola, Zwickau, 1881 ; Dr. Reinhold Hofmann, Dr. GeorgAgricola, Gotha, 1905. The last is an exhaustive biographical sketch, to which we referthose who are interested.