Crusius, Martin

, a learned German scholar and antiquary, was born at Grebern, in the bishopric of Bamberg, Sept. 19, 1526, and after some elementary instruction from his father, a minister of the Lutheran church, was sent to Dim, where he studied Greek and Latin under Gregory Leonard, and by his diligence and progress obtained a pension from the senators of UJm, which enabled him to pursue his studies without expense to his father. In 1545 he went to Strasburgh, where, after applying for some time to polite literature, he learned Hebrew, and went through a course of divinity, Still liberally maintained by the city of Ulm; and in 1547 was appointed tutor to a person of rank. Some years after, he presided over the school at Memmingen, and raised its reputation very considerably. In 1559 he was chosen professor of moral philosophy and Greek at Tubingen; but in 1566 was obliged to leave it on account of the plague, and did not return, along with the other professors, until 1568. At the age of eighty -one, perceiving that he was near his end, he assembled the whole university, with the rector at its head, and after entertaining them sumptuously, gave them a goblet worth an hundred florins. He died Feb. 25, 1607, leaving a library which was valued at 2000 florins. Besides the learned languages, he was a good French scholar, but was most distinguished for his acquairt nee with the modern Greek, and was the first who taught it in Germany. Of his numerous works, the following are the most important: 1. “Turco-Graecias libri octo, utraque lingua edita. Quibus Graecorum status sub imperio Turcico, in politia et ecclesia, ceconomia et scholis, jam hide ab amissa Constantinopoli, ad haec usque tempora, luculenter describitur,” Basil, 1584, folio. 2. “Acta et Scripta Theologorum Wirtembergensium, et Patriarchs Constantinopolitani D. Hieremiae quas utrique ab anno 1576 usque ad annum 1581 de Augustana Confessione inter se miserunt,” Gr. & Lat. 1584, fol. 3. “ | Germano-Graeciae libri sex > in quorum prioribus tribus, Orationes, in reliquis Carmina, Gr. & Lat. continentur,” fol. without date, but from the dedication, probably 1585. 4. “Annales Suevici, sive Chronica rerum gestarum antiquissimae et inclytae Suevicas Gentis quibus quicquid fere de ea haberi potuit, ex Lat. & Graec. aliarumque linguarum auctoribus, scriptisque plurimis, non editis, comprehenditur, &c.” 1595 and 1596, 2 vols. fol. These works, which are now rare, are highly esteemed, and throw much light on history, and particularly on the history of the modern Greeks. One other work of Martin Crusius may be mentioned as a curiosity: “Corona Anni, hoc est, explicatio Evangeliorum et Epistolarum quae diebus dominicis et festis in ecclesia proponuntur; e Tubingeiisium, et aliorum Theologorum eonckmibus, conscripta,” Wittemberg, 1602, 4 vols. 4to. From 1563 he had been accustomed to write in the church the sermons of the preachers of Tubingen, which he did first in Latin, but when professor of Greek, he thought it his duty to use that language, and with such indefatigable perseverance, that, "between 1563 and 1601, he had made a collection of those discourses, amounting to 6174, and published some of them in other volumes, and would have published more, if he could have found any persons who would defray the expence. The work before us he had in vain offered to the booksellers at different times for seven years, and at length the court of Saxony bore the expence of printing. It contains 516 sermons in Greek and Latin, in double columns. This singular undertaking had not, as may be supposed, much success; and the few copies which exist are considered rather as objects of curiosity than utility. ¹