Sabinus (Schuler) Georg

Georgius Sabinus (Schuler) was educated at Wittenberg under Melanchthon. In 1530 he accompanied the latter to the diet of Augsburg and published a volume of poetry, Elegiae, which immediately attracted the attention of the literary world. In 1533 he left for Italy, where Pietro Bembo came to take interest in him and his work. In August 1534, as he was preparing to return to Germany from Venice, he persuaded Giambattista Egnazio to give him a letter of introduction to Erasmus. By October he was in Freiburg and obtained from Erasmus some flattering letters to take back to Melanchthon.

In 1536 he married Melanchthton's daughter Anna and in 1538 he was appointed to the chair of rhetoric at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder. In 1544 Albert, duke of Prussia, invited him to Königsberg, were he became the rector of the ducal college, which was quickly promoted to the status of a university (cf. L. Mundt, Die Lehrtätigkeit des Georg Sabinus an der Universität Königsberg, in: “Die Universität Königsberg in der Frühen Neuzeit”, H. Marti & M. Komorosowski, eds., Köln, 2008, pp. 77-115).

In 1553 Sabinus was crowned with laurels and dubbed a knight by none other than the papal ‘count palatine' Girolamo Aleandro, Luther's antagonist at the diet of Worms. In 1555 he returned to Frankfurt and was again appointed professor and councillor to Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg, for whom he undertook several diplomatic missions in Italy and Poland.

Sabinus was a fried of Joachim Camerarius and of his fellow poets Eobanus Hessus and Johannes Dantiscus. He corresponded occasionally with Bembo, in whose entourage at Padua he also met Damião de Gois. Apart his poetry he also contributed to classical and historical scholarship, such as a commentary on Ovid and a work on emperor Maximilian.