Helius Eobanus Hessus

Helius Eobanus Hessus (6 January 1488 – 5 October 1540) was a German Latin poet born at Halgehausen in Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel).

His family name is said to have been Koch; Eoban was the name of a local saint; Hessus indicates the land of his birth, Helius the fact that he was born on Sunday. He visited a Latin school in Frankenberg, Hesse. In 1504 he entered the university of Erfurt, and soon after his graduation was appointed rector of the school of St Severus. This post he soon lost, and spent the years 1509–1513 at the court of the bishop of Riesenburg.

Returning to Erfurt, he was reduced to great straits by his drunken and irregular habits. At length (in 1517) he was appointed professor of Latin in the university. He was prominently associated with the distinguished men of the time (Johann Reuchlin, Konrad Peutinger, Ulrich von Hutten, Konrad Mutianus), and took part in the political, religious and literary quarrels of the period, finally declaring in favor of Luther and the Reformation for the rest of his life.

The university was seriously weakened by the growing popularity of the new University of Wittenberg, and Hessus endeavoured (but without success) to gain a living by the practice of medicine. Through the influence of Camerarius and Melanchthon, he obtained a post at Nuremberg (1526), but, finding a regular life distasteful, he again went back to Erfurt (1533). But it was not the Erfurt he had known; his old friends were dead or had left the place; the university was deserted. A lengthy poem gained him the favor of the Landgrave of Hesse, by whom he was summoned in 1536 as professor of poetry and history to Marburg, where he died.

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