Henry Glarean

From the Catholic Encyclopedia

(LORITI)

The most distinguished of Swiss humanists, poet, philosopher, geographer, mathematician, and musician, was born at Mollis, near Glarus, Switzerland, in June, 1488, and died at Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 27 March, 1563. Loriti, or Glarean, as he came to be called after 1511, from the name of the town near which he was born, received his first instruction (as did Oswald Myconius, Rudolf Agricola, and others) from Michael Rubellus, at Rottweil. Rubellus also paid special attention to the development of his pupil's musical talent. In 1566 Glarean entered the University of Cologne, where he devoted himself to philosophical and theological studies, and learned music and mathematics, from Cochlaeus, and Greek from Caesarius. In 1510 he became a Licentiate and Master of Arts. In 1512 Maximilian I showed his appreciation of a poem which Glarean composed in his honour by raising its author to the dignity of poet laureate. In 1514 the University of Basle received him among its Magistri and licensed him to conduct a bursa, or students' hall. Among his pupils was Aegidius Tschudi, who was afterwards to become famous as an historian of Switzerland and as a zealous defender of Catholicism in the Canton of Glarus.

While at Basle Glarean formed a strong attachment for Erasmus who in turn, acting as parens et proeceptor, remained to the last a devoted friend and no doubt influenced his attitude in the midst of religious agitation and troubles. Glarean carried a recommendation from him when he started for Paris in 1517; here too, he gathered pupils around him in a bursa and entered into close scientific intercourse with Budaeus, Faber Stapulensis, and Faustus Andrelinus. On the death of the last-named, Glarean became the recipient of a royal allowance, although he received no mandate to lecture publicly. In 1522 he settled at Basle, where he had a large following; but the continued advance of the religious movement which he, as an admirer of Luther's writings, and an intimate friend of Zwingli, Myconius, and Oecolompadius, had originally sympathized with, gave him little satisfaction. He severed his relations with the partisans of the Reformation and in 1529 emigrated with Ber, Amerbach, and Erasmus, to Freiburg-im-Breisgau. He laboured in this university until his death, and was one of its most celebrated professors.

Glarean was the author of numerous and important works. In the course of his public and private teaching he produced a multitude of editions of, and commentaries on, ancient writers, among whom were Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Horace, Ovid, Donatus, Caesar, Sallust, Terence, Boethius, Lucan, Valerius Maximus, Eutropius, and Curtius. He made distinguished contributions to his favourite sciences, music and geography. He published at Basle, in 1547, his "Doekachordon," which was based on twenty years' study of ancient and ecclesiastical music, and introduced twelve tones, instead of the eight only which had been known until then. The "Dodekachordon" was recently published in the sixteenth volume of the "Publikation aelterer praktischer und theoretischer Musikwerke" (Leipzig, 1888-90). The standing of Glarean as a geographer rests on his "Helvetiae-Descriptio," a verse composition (Basle, 1515; also re-edited by Bernoulli in 1890), one of the earliest and most widely read descriptions of Switzerland; also on his "Liber de Geographia unus" (Basle, 1527), which is an exhaustive and specific study, in forty chapters, of the principles of mathematical geography. A find of historical interest was a manuscript map of the world, dated 1510, in which he, like Waldseemüller, used for the newly discovered continent the name of "Terra America." The library of Glarean eventually passed, through his friend, Bishop S.E. von Knoeringen, to the University of Ingolstadt, and is now at Munich.

SCHREIBER, Heinrich Loriti Glareanus (Freiburg, 1837); FRITZSCHE, Glarean (Frauenfeld, 1890); OBERMUMMER, Zwei handschriftliche Karten des Glareanus in der Münchner Universitaetsbibliothek in Jahresbericht der geograph. Gesellsch., (Munich, 1892), s. 67-74; ELTER, de Henrico Glareano geographo (Bonn, 1896); HAYW00D, Glareanus, His Geography and Maps in Geographical Journal (1905), XXV, 647-54.

OTTO HARTIG