RODOLPHUS

AGRICOLA (properly ROELOF HUYSMANN) (1443-1485)  , Dutch scholar, was born at Baflo, near . Groningen, in 1443 . He was educated at Louvain, where he graduated as master of arts . After residing for some time in Paris, he went in 1476 to Ferrara in Italy, and attended the lectures of the celebrated Theodorus Gaza (1400-1478) on the Greek language . Having visited Pavia and Rome, he returned to his native country about 1479, and was soon afterwards appointed syndic of Groningen . In 1482, on the invitation of Johann von Dalberg, bishop of Worms (1445-1503), whose friendship he hai gained in Italy, he accepted a professorship at Heidelberg, and for three years delivered lectures there and at Worms on the literature of Greece and Rome . By his personal influence much more than by his writings he did much for the promotion of learning in Germany; and Erasmus and other critics of the generation immediately succeeding his own are full of his praises . In his opposition to the scholastic philosophy he in some degree anticipated the great intellectual revolution in which many of his pupils were conspicuous actors . He died at Heidelberg on the 28th of October 1485 . His principal work is De inventione dialectica, libri iii., in which he attempts to change the scholastic philosophy of the day . . See T . F .

Tresling, Vita et Merita Rudolphi Agricolae (Groningen, 1830) ; v . Bezold, R .

Agricola (Munchen, 1884) ; and Ihm, Der Humanist R . Agricola, sein Leben and seine Schriften (Paderb., 1893) .