INTRODUCTION 



BIOGRAPHY. 



EORGIUS AGRICOLA was bom at Glauchau, in 

 Saxony, on March 24th, 1494, and therefore entered 

 the world when it was still upon the threshold of the 

 Renaissance ; Gutenberg's first book had been print- 

 ed but forty years before ; the Humanists had but 

 begun that stimulating criticism which awoke the 

 Reformation; 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 Luther 

 was bom the year before Agricola, and through him Agricola's home- 

 land became the cradle of the great movement ; nor did Agricola escape being 

 drawn into the conflict. Italy, already awake with the new classical revival, was 

 still a busy workshop of antiquarian research, translation, study, and 

 publication, and through her the Greek and Latin Classics were only 

 now available for wide distribution. Students from the rest of Europe, 

 among them at a later time Agricola himself, flocked to the Italian 

 Universities, and on their return infected their native cities with the newly- 

 awakened learning. At Agricola's birth Columbus had just returned from his 

 great discovery, and it was only three years later that Vasco Da Gama rounded 

 Cape Good Hope. Thus these two foremost explorers had only initiated 

 that greatest period of geographical expansion in the world's history. A few 

 dates will recall how far this exploration extended during Agricola's lifetime. 

 Balboa first saw the Pacific in 15 13 ; Cortes entered the City of Mexico in 

 1520 ; Magellan entered the Pacific in the same year ; Pizarro penetrated 

 into Peru in 1528 ; De Soto landed in Florida in 1539, and Potosi was dis- 

 covered in 1546. Omitting the sporadic settlement on the St. Lawrence by 

 Cartier in 1541, the settlement of North America did not begin for a quarter 

 of a century after Agricola's death. Thus the revival of learning, with its 

 train of Humanism, the Reformation, its stimulation of exploration and the 

 re-awakening of the arts and sciences, was stiU in its infancy with Agricola. 



We know practically nothing of Agricola's antecedents or his youth. His 

 real name was Georg Bauer (" peasant "), and it was probably Latinized by 

 his teachers, as was the custom of the time. His own brother, in receipts 



^For the biographical information here set out we have rehed principally upon the 

 following works : — Petrus Albinus, Meissnische Land Und Berg Chronica, Dresden, 1590 ; 

 Adam Daniel Richter, Umstandliche. . . . Chronica der Sladi Chemnitz, Leipzig, 1754 ; 

 Johann Gottfried Weller, Altes Aus Allen Theilen Der Geschichte, Chemnitz, 1766 ; 

 Freidrich August Schmid, Georg Agrikola's Bermannus, Freiberg, 1806 ; Georg Heinrich 

 Jacobi, Der Mineralog Geotgius Agricola, Zwickau, 1881 ; Dr. Reinhold Hofmann, Dr. Georg 

 Agricola, Gotha, 1905. The last is an exhaustive biographical sketch, to which we refer 

 those who are interested. 



