Melchior Adam

Melchior Adam (* 1575 in Grottkau in the principality of Neisse; † 23 March or December 26, 1622 in Heidelberg ) was an educator, lexicographer and literary historian. He was known as a biographer of his, written in Latin scholar biographies. Printed in the years 1615-1620 Vitae (CVs) treat in five departments 546 scholars primarily from the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation for the period 1400-1618.

Life and work

Adam completed his academic education, after eight years of attending high school in Brieg at various universities. 1598, he went to Heidelberg and acquired there in 1600 the academic degree of Master of Arts. In 1601 he took over at the Heidelberg school apprenticeship, in 1606 vice-principal and principal in 1613. Time living coupled to Silesian cultural area, the reformed Adam was a prominent figure in the Palatine Calvinism on the eve of the Thirty Years' War. For a long time sickly, he died in 1622. His relatively early death in the taking of Heidelberg by the League of exhaustion is attributed by strenuous work. Since two points are called the time of death remains unknown whether he died before or after the siege of Heidelberg.

After minor academic work in the years 1601 and 1602 he had published in 1612 his first major work on the inscriptions of Heidelberg in Heidelberg. It mostly contains epitaphs from Heidelberg and the immediate vicinity. According to the beige passed index data are recorded at 261 persons. In 1615 began the pressure of the Vitae, his main work. The five sections dealing separately with philosophers ( with the inclusion of the philologists, poets, historians, mathematicians and physicists ), doctors, lawyers and politicians, theologians, and outstanding foreign theologians. Adam took only deceased persons in his collection. Each section is arranged in ascending chronological order according to the date of death of scholars. Except for the 20 foreign theologians only domestic scholars are discussed. A single woman interrupts the men associated with Heidelberg Olympia Fulvia Morata humanist the ranks. Your intake founded Adam with their exemplary character and the fact that her husband was German.

The operation

Adams 's great work is the addition of a school 's work. The Master of Arts and Laureate of Grottkau in Upper Silesia (born 1575) was from 1601 to teachers and in 1613 rector of Heidelberg Paedagogium. His texts are largely a summary or a paraphrase of selected sources dar. Adams Latin is elegant and lively; the biographer portrays fate and work of his 'heroes' with empathy and a keen intellect. The fact that it falls back to a fixed stock of formulas, viewpoints and judgments accords with practices of the times and the needs of its broad spectrum company.

Adam possessed a rich collection of printed funeral sermons. These texts usually contain a resume of the deceased, in which, however, more of whose origin and social environment, of character, virtues and honor as well as of disease and death of the speech is acknowledged as of his learned works. In some Vita the structure of this source type appears to still through. Adam was beyond the resources of the richest German library of his time, the Heidelberg Bibliotheca Palatina, fall back, which were provided to him by the librarian Jan Gruter, readily available. He drew from individual biographies, correspondence, country and contemporary historical works, litterärhistorischen compendia and occasionally even from verbal reports. He endeavored, as far as it allowed him the limits of its source of material and its working capacity, a comprehensive collection and critical review of the sources. Frequently he calls the literature used at the end of the article or even in marginalia to individual sites.

Works

• Apographum monumentorum Haidelbergensium. Heidelberg in 1612. Fulltext in the Google Book Search
• Vitae Germanorum philosophorum, qui Seculo superiori, et quod excurrit, philosophical matters ac humanioribus Literis clari floruerunt. Frankfurt am Main and Heidelberg 1615th full text in the Google Book Search, Internet Archive
• Disce mori or dying art. Neustadt a d H. 1615th
• Parodiae et metaphrases Horatianae. Frankfurt am Main in 1616.
• Decades duae continentes vitas theologorum exterorum principum, qui Ecclesiam Christi superiori Seculo propagarunt et propugnarunt. Frankfurt am Main and Heidelberg 1618th
• Vitae Germanorum jureconsultorum et politicorum, qui superiori Seculo, et quod excurrit, floruerunt. Frankfurt am Main and Heidelberg 1620.
• Vitae Germanorum medicorum. Frankfurt am Main and Heidelberg 1620.
• Vitae Germanorum theologorum, qui Ecclesiam Christi superiori Seculo voce scriptisque propagarunt et propugnarunt. Frankfurt am Main and Heidelberg 1620.