INTRODUCTION.

BIOGRAPHY.

GEORGIUS AGRICOLA was born at Glauchau, in Saxony, on March 24, 1494. He entered the world when it was still upon the threshold of the Renaissance. Gutenberg's first book had been printed only forty years before; the Humanists had just begun that stimulating criticism which awoke the Reformation; Erasmus of Rotterdam, who was subsequently to become Agricola's friend and patron, was just completing his student days. The Reformation itself was yet to come, but it was not long delayed; Luther was born the year before Agricola, and through him Agricola's homeland became the cradle of that 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 becoming available for wide distribution. Students from the rest of Europe, among them Agricola himself at a later time, flocked to the Italian universities and, upon 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 the Cape of 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 1513; 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 discovered 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, and the stimulation of exploration and the re-awakening of the arts and sciences, was still in its infancy during Agricola's life.

We know practically nothing of Agricola's ancestry or his youth. His real name was Georg Bauer ("peasant"), and it was probably Latinized It was common practice for scholars to use Latin-sounding names, often translations of their own names, as a sign of their academic status. by his teachers, as was the custom of the time. His own brother, in receipts...

¹For the biographical information here set out we have relied principally upon the following works:—Petrus Albinus, Meissnische Land Und Berg Chronica (Meissen Land and Mining Chronicle), Dresden, 1590; Adam Daniel Richter, Umständliche . . . Chronica der Stadt Chemnitz (Detailed Chronicle of the City of Chemnitz), Leipzig, 1754; Johann Gottfried Weller, Altes Aus Allen Theilen Der Geschichte (Old Things from All Parts of History), Chemnitz, 1766; Friedrich August Schmid, Georg Agrikola's Bermannus, Freiberg, 1806; Georg Heinrich Jacobi, Der Mineralog Georgius Agricola (The Mineralogist Georgius 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.