AGRICOLA, RODOLPHUS (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 had 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 und seine Schriften (Paderb., 1893).
Initial text from 1911 encyclopedia -- Please update as needed