Georg Fabricius

Georg Fabricius (Georgius Fabricius Chemnicensis; 23 April 1516– 17 July 1571) was a Protestant German poet, historian and archaeologist who wrote in Latin during the German Renaissance.

Life
Fabricius was born as Georg Goldschmidt in Chemnitz in Saxony on 23 April 1516. He was educated at the University of Leipzig. In 1546 he was appointed rector of Saint Afra in Meissen.

Travelling in Italy with one of his pupils, he made an exhaustive study of the antiquities of Rome. In 1549 Fabricius edited the first short selection of Roman inscriptions focusing specifically on legal texts. This was a key moment in the history of classical epigraphy: for the first time in print a humanist explicitly demonstrated the value of such archaeological remains for the discipline of law, and implicitly accorded texts inscribed in stone as authoritative a status as those recorded in manuscripts. He published fuller results in his Roma, in which the correspondence between every discoverable relic of the old city and the references to them in ancient literature was traced in detail. In his sacred poems he affected to avoid every word with the slightest savour of paganism; and he blamed the poets for their allusions to pagan divinities.

He encouraged music at his school, although he was not himself a musician. Some of his writings were set to music by composers such as Martin Agricola, Johann Walter, Mattheus Le Maistre, Antonio Scandello, Johann Reusch and Wolfgang Figulus.

Fabricius died at Meissen on 17 July 1571.

Works
Fabricius was a prolific author. Editions of Fabricius's own works include:


 * , Wittenberg 1545, Basel 1552.
 * , Strasburg 1546, 1551, Köln 1561, 1564, Leipzig 1560.
 * , Leipzig 1547, Basel 1550.
 * , Leipzig 1548, 1563, 1565, 1572, 1575, 1576, 1582, Köln 1555, 1562, 1565, Dortmund 1565, Nürnberg 1556.
 * , Basel 1549, 1560 (Johannes Oporinus).
 * , Strasburg 1549.
 * , Leipzig 1549, 1560, 1562, 1564, 1570, Köln 1573, Düsseldorf 1558.
 * , Basel 1551.
 * , Leipzig 1551.
 * , Leipzig 1553.
 * , Leipzig 1552, Basel 1553.
 * , Leipzig 1553.
 * , Leipzig 1553.
 * , Leipzig 1554, 1560, 1571, 1589, Basel 1555.
 * , Leipzig 1556, 1560.
 * , Basel 1560.
 * , Basel 1560.
 * , Basel 1562, 1564.
 * , Leipzig 1564, 1571, 1572, 1580, 1582, 1590.
 * , Basel 1564.
 * , Leipzig 1565.
 * , Basel 1565.
 * , Leipzig 1566.
 * , Leipzig 1566, 1571, 1578, 1580, 1584, 1589.
 * , Basel 1567.
 * , Leipzig 1568.
 * , Leipzig 1569, Jena 1598.
 * , Leipzig 1569.
 * , Dresden 1570.
 * , Dresden 1570.
 * , Leipzig 1574, 1580, 1582.
 * , Leipzig 1584, Strasburg 1584.
 * , Leipzig 1597, posthumous.
 * , Leipzig 1609, posthumous.

He also produced editions of the following works with his own commentaries:
 * Vergil. Leipzig 1548, 1551, 1553, Basel 1561.
 * Terence. Strasburg 1549.
 * Seneca's Tragödien. Leipzig 1566.
 * Horace. Leipzig 1571.
 * Ovid. Köln 1576.

His letters have also been posthumously published. His "In Praise of Georgius Agricola" includes the quote "Death comes to all but great achievements raise a monument which shall endure until the sun grows old."

Legacy
A life of Georg Fabricius was published in 1839 by D. K. W. Baumgarten-Crusius, who in 1845 also issued an edition of Fabricius's Epistolae ad W Meurerum et alios aequales with a short sketch ''De Vita Ge. Fabricius de gente Fabriciorum''. See also F. Wachter in Ersch and Gruber's Allgemeine Encyclopädie.