HESSUS, Helius Eobanus (1488-1540), a distinguished German humanist of the 16th century, was bern January 6, 1488, at Bockendorf near Frankenberg in Hesse. His family name is not known: the baptismal name Eoban he owed to a local saint; Hessus merely indicates the land of his origin; while the prenomen Helius was assumed by himself partly with reference to the sun-god, patron of poets, and partly also, it is said, with reference to the fact that he had been born on a Sunday. His early education was received in the monastery of Haina, where his father held a menial position, and afterwards at Frankenberg; in 1503 he entered the university of Erfurt, where in 1505 Crotus Rubianus and Ulrich von Hutten became his fellow-students and his firm friends. Though devoting himself enthusiastically to the composition of Latin verse, in which he soon became an acknowledged master, he was far from neglecting the other studies of the place, and shortly after his graduation he held for a short time the post of rector of the St Severus school. Compelled by disturbances to leave Erfurt in 1510, he for five years led a somewhat wandering life, in the course of which he passed some time in Leipsic as a student of law; in

1515 he returned to his former post at Erfurt, and in

1516 became professor of belles-lettres. He was now prominently associated with Reuchlin, Peutinger, Mutianus, as well as with Crotus Rubianus and Hutten; and from the first he fully identified himself with the cause of Luther and ,the Reformation. In 1526 he went as teacher of rhetoric and poetry to Nuremberg, but in 1534 returned to Erfurt, whence in 1536 he was called to the chair of poetry and history in Marburg. There he died October 5, 1540....