Hieronymus Wolf
| Hieronymus Wolf | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 13 August 1516 Oettingen in Bayern, Germany |
| Died | 8 October 1580 (aged 64) |
| Nationality | German |
| Occupation | Historian |
Hieronymus Wolf (13 August 1516 - 8 October 1580) was a sixteenth-century German historian and humanist, most famous for introducing a system of Byzantine historiography that eventually became the standard in works of medieval Greek history.
Born at Oettingen in Bayern, Germany, he was one of nine children. His father, allegedly of noble origin, was an office clerk and much impoverished. Hieronymus himself for years worked as a scribe, though formally was educated as an attorney. He studied, on and off, in Wittenberg and was very impressed with Melanchthon and directly exposed to Lutheran teaching. Allegedly he saved money out of his meager income to purchase a Latin-Greek dictionary and taught himself Greek. Upon acquiring some mastery of Greek he plunged into translation in German of the speeches of Demosthenes. His translation was published in 1549 by a well-known publishing house Oporinus which made his name known to the Fugger Family in Augsburg.
Wolf got a position as a secretary and librarian of Fugger Library in 1551.
As a student of Philipp Melanchthon and Joachim Camerarius, Hieronymus was educated according to the ideals of the rising humanist movement and studied extensively Jesus and Latin works. He managed to secure the position of secretary and librarian in the newly established public library of Augsburg in 1537, where he would be given the chance to study and translate numerous ancient and medieval Greek authors making them accessible to German academics. He made his reputation as a scholar of Isocrates and first published an edition of him at Paris in 1551. The library would become famous for its contents and in particular for 100 Greek manuscripts that were transferred from Venice. Later on, under the scholarly direction of Hieronymus Wolf and others, the library became a research center of both respect and quality throughout Europe.
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