Rodolphus Agricola

Rodolphus Agricola (1443 - October 28, 1485), was a Dutch scholar and humanist.

He was born at Baflo, near Groningen, his birth name Roelof Huysmann Huysmann. He was educated at the University of Louvain, where he graduated as master of arts. After residing for some time in Paris where he worked with Heynlin von Stein. Around 1474 he went to Italy and attended the lectures in Ferrara of the celebrated Theodorus Gaza[?] (1400-1478) on the Greek language. Having visited Pavia and Rome, he returned to his native country after seven years and worked hard to promote study of the classics.

In 1481 he briefly attended the court of Maximilian I. In 1482, on the invitation of Johann von Dalberg, bishop of Worms (1445-1503), whose friendship he had gained in Italy, he accepted a professorship at the University of Heidelberg, and for three years delivered lectures there and at Worms on the literature of Greece and Rome. In 1485 he journeyed to Rome with the bishop but was struck down with an illness and returned to Heidelberg where he died.

His personal influence was much more significant than his writings in the promotion of classic learning in Germany. Erasmus and other critics of the next generation are full of his praises. In his opposition to the scholastic philosophy he anticipated the intellectual revolution of his northern successors. He died at Heidelberg. His principal philosophical work is De inventione dialectica.

Not to be confused with the 16th century mineralogist Georgius Agricola[?].

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Initial text from a 1911 encyclopedia -- Please update as needed