Background

Georgius Agricola, also known as Georg Baueer, was born in Glauchau, Germany on 24 March 1494. Agricola’s father was probably Gregor Bauer, a dyer and woolen draper. The eldest son, Franciscus, became a priest at Zwickau and later at Glauchau.

Education

Georg attended various schools in Glauchau, Zwickau, and Magdeburg (1511), and in 1514—rather late, since the average age at matriculation was between twelve and fifteen he entered Leipzig University, where he received his B.A. degree in 1515.

Career

After receiving the B.A. degree from the University of Leipzig in 1515, Georgius Agricola remained there as a lecturer in elementary Greek until he was chosen ludi moderator at Zwickau in 1517. In 1519, as rector extraordinarius, he organized the new Schola Graeca and wrote his first work, De prima ac simplici institutione grammatica (1520). This short booklet is an excellent specimen of the new humanistic pedagogy, with interesting examples taken from a schoolboy’s experiences.

Zwickau was a center of the Reformation, and although Agricola believed a reformation was necessary, he did not approve of its revolutionary aspects. He therefore returned to Leipzig in 1523 to study medicine under Heinrich Stromer von Auerbach; to support himself, he had been endowed with the prebend of the St. Erasmus altar for three years by the council of Zwickau. This enabled him to visit Italy, and on his way he stopped in Basel to pay his respects to Erasmus. Agricola spent three years at Bologna and Venice as a member of the editorial staff for the Aldina editions of Galen and Hippocrates. He also joined the English group headed by Edward Wotton and John Clement, son-in-law of Sir Thomas More. This group may have aroused Agricola’s interest in politics and economics.

Following the route through the mining districts in Carinthia, Styria, and the Tyrol, Agricola returned to Germany in the fall of 1526 with the M.D. degree. The following spring he was elected town physician and apothecary of St. Joachimsthal (now Jachymov), Czechoslovakia. Here he continued his studies on the pharmaceutical use of minerals and smelting products, with a view to compiling comments on Galen and Hippocrates.

In those days St. Joachimsthal was the most important mining center in Europe besides Schwaz in the Tyrol. Miners and smelters, some of whom suffered from occupational diseases, were crowded together. Agricola studied not only their ailments but also their life, labor, and equipment. Day and night he visited the mines and the smoky smelting houses, and soon he had an excellent knowledge of mining and metallurgy. He recorded his impressions in Bermannus sive de re metallica dialogus (1530).

The success of this pioneer delineation of mining and metallurgy was assured by Erasmus, who contributed a letter of recommendation. Agricola was now a well-known author, and he indefatigably sustained his reputation with a flow of important books. The next ones were political and economic: Oratio de bello adversus Turcam suscipiendo (1531) and De mensuris et ponderibus (1533).

Since there were too many demands on his time in St. Joachimsthal, Agricola decided to return to Chemnitz, to be town physician in this quieter, smaller town on the northern slope of the Erzgebirge. Chemnitz had a copper smelter which was used to extract silver from the ore. Agricola’s knowledge of mining enabled him to profit from mining shares. He always seemed to enter into the right partnership and to avoid profitless ventures. By 1542 he was one of the twelve richest inhabitants of Chemnitz. After fifteen years of hard work he succeeded in finishing a complete series of inquiries concerning the principles of geology and mineralogy. This series must be considered his greatest scientific achievement. It had not yet been published when Agricola became involved in the war of Emperor Charles V against the Protestant Schmalkaldic League: he was elected mayor of Chemnitz, appointed a councillor to the court of Saxony, and sent as an ambassador to the emperor and his younger brother Ferdinand, king of Bohemia. He was not able to return to his scientific work until 1548, but new books appeared soon after: De animantibus subterraneis (1549) and an enlarged edition of De mensuris el ponderibus (1550).

In 1550 Agricola returned to St. Joachimsthal for some weeks. He saw a very changed situation: the prosperity was gone, nearly all of the ruling family had been deposed or expelled, and some of the new royal officials had not the slightest idea of the needs of the town and its inhabitants. Agricola gave a 5,000-thaler credit -worth 2,000 cows in those days - to the counts Schlick to promote prospecting for new deposits, a search that was successful. He went home to Chemnitz conscious of having done a good deed, and with him he took the finished text of his chief work, De re metallica libri XU, begun twenty years before in St. Joachimsthal. During his visit to St. Joachimsthal he had met the expert designer Blasius WeAring, who spent the next three years illustrating the text.

When the black plague spread through Saxony in 1552-1553, Agricola worked day and night, going from the pesthouses to his family. His studies during the plague led Agricola to publish De peste libri III (1554). Agricola could not retire until another work was finished.

In 1534 Georg the Whiskered, duke of Saxony and a patron of the Catholic church, had nominated Agricola as historiographer of the court of Saxony, probably with the hope of discovering genealogical claims on territories by heirs-at-law. For twenty years Agricola studied yellowed parchments and old chronicles. His honesty forbade him to conceal the rulers’ mistakes uncovered during his research: he was a scholar, not a courtier. He recorded his findings very frankly—much to the disappointment of Augustus, third duke after Georg the Whiskered. It is no wonder, then, that the Sippschaft des Hausses zu Sachssen, an evaluation of all the rulers of Saxony, remained unpublished until 1963.

Augustus ignored the dedication dated 9 August 1555, but more important is that of 18 March 1555, for the second, enlarged edition of the mineralogical works (1558). It contains Agricola’s most quoted words on peace and war, written before the Peace of Augsburg (September 1555), when war between the Catholic and Protestant confessions seemed imminent. For Agricola, that decisive agreement was the end of all his hopes for a reunion in faith.

He died in Chemnitz on the 21st of November, 1555 - so violent was the theological feeling against him that he was not allowed to be buried in the town to which he had added such lustre. After Agricola’s death the religious struggle renewed over his corpse. The Protestant clergy refused to allow his being buried in the parish church at Chemnitz, an honor traditionally accorded to mayors; and it was only through the intervention of his old friend Julius von Pflug, bishop of Zeitz-Naumburg, that he was interred in the cathedral at Zeitz. Amidst hostile demonstrations he was carried to Zeitz, some fifty kilometers (30 miles) away, and buried there.

Four months after his death, De re metallica libri XII, illustrated with 292 woodcuts, appeared. A year later an Old German translation by Philippus Bech was published using the same woodcuts, which were used for 101 years in seven editions.

Achievements

• 

  Georgius Agricola achievements were numerous and vital for the development of revolutionary techniques in the field of metallurgy. Agricola also made fundamental contributions to mining geology, mineralogy, structural geology, and paleontology. He is considered the founder of geology as a discipline. His work paved the way for further systematic study of the Earth and of its rocks, minerals, and fossils.
  
  Georgius Agricola wrote over two dozen works on mining, metallurgy, medicine, and religion, many of which had survived. Agricola's works played a very important role in the development of geology and paleontology as scientific disciplines. His most known book on mining and metallurgy called "De re metallica. " De Re Metallica, literally translated, means "On the Nature of Metals," but the word metal had a wider meaning at the time, and meant any mineral. In this book, which remained the standard text on mining for two centuries, Agricola reviewed everything then known about mining, including equipment and machinery, means of finding ores - he rejected the use of divining-rods and other such magical means - methods of surveying and digging, assaying ores, smelting, mine administration, and even occupational diseases of miners.
  
  Agricola also wrote the first book on physical geology, De Ortu et Causis Subterraneorum (1546), notable for its descriptions of wind and water as powerful geological forces, and for its explanation of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as produced by subterranean vapors and gases heated by the Earth's internal heat. In his 1546 published work on mineralogy, he set initial standards for the science of the future. Knowing nothing of atomic theory, stoichiometry, or crystallography, it was a colossal achievement to refute the ancient theory of the four elements: earth, water, fire, and air. For a classification of minerals, he used criteria of outward appearance such as hardness, color, consistence, solubility, smell, or taste. To the then-recognized seven metals, gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, lead, and mercury, he added bismuth and antimony. He was the first to recognize the difference between igneous and sedimentary rock, and he comprehended that ore deposits were formed by precipitation from solutions that had seeped into fissures in their surrounding rocks.
  
  However, his greatest contribution to paleontology was his book De Natura Fossilium (On the Nature of Fossils), also published in 1546. This book is not restricted to what we call fossils today: the Latin word fossilis meant anything dug out of the ground, and Agricola's book included descriptions of all kinds of minerals, gemstones, and even gallstones, in addition to what we would call fossils now.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • De Re Metallica (Dover Earth Science)

    ( )

  • Georg Agrikola's mineralogische Schriften 1807

    ( )

  • Georgius Agricola de Re Metallica

    ( )

  • Georgii Agricolae de Re Metallica Libri XII, Quibus Officia, Instrumenta

    ( )

  • Georgius Agricola: De Natura Fossilium Libri X: Die Mineralien (Georgius Agricola Ausgewahlte Werke - Band IV)

Religion

In his religious affiliation Agricola was a devout Catholic. For more than three years he served with the councillors of Moritz, duke of Saxony, as one of the few Roman Catholic representatives at the Protestant court. He never wrote about the diplomatic missions he was charged with, but we may assume that his parleys with the Catholic emperor’s commanders and diplomats were effective.

It contains Agricola’s most quoted words on peace and war, written before the Peace of Augsburg (September 1555), when war between the Catholic and Protestant confessions seemed imminent. He remained to the end a staunch Catholic, though all Chemnitz had gone over to the Lutheran creed, and it is said that his life was ended by a fit of apoplexy brought on by a heated discussion with a Protestant divine.

Views

With respect to occupational science, Agricola was nearly the first, who focused in his Book VI of De Re Metallica, on the diseases of miners. After describing the tools and machinery of mine operation, including quite modern ventilation equipment, Agricola continued: “It remains for me to speak about the ailments and accidents of miners, and of the methods by which they can guard against these, for we should always devote more care to maintaining our health, that we may freely perform our bodily functions, than to making profits.”

Miners of his time wore a smock with belt, breeches, a short apron, and a pointed cap. If they appear reminiscent of gnomes—those are modeled after medieval miners! Agricola knew about personal protective clothing. He recommended elbow-high leather gloves for work with aggressive minerals, and a veil worn before the face to protect from dusts. He thought highly of rawhide boots for workers standing in cold water, evidently cognizant of gout and arthritis. About the dangers of dusts he reported: “The dust which is stirred and beaten up by digging penetrates into the windpipes and lungs and produces difficulty in breathing, and the disease which the Greeks call asthma. If the dust has corrosive qualities, it eats away the lungs, and implants consumption in the body …” (De Re Metallica, Book VI).

It has been said that Agricola recognized cancer caused by radon, the latter being found frequently in the mines of the Erzgebirge, as he wrote of “an angel choking old miners to death.” It is very unlikely, however, that he had the diagnostic abilities to differentiate the various occupational respiratory diseases. But he knew of the gas that sinks to the bottom of mines, extinguishes candles and takes away the breath of miners (carbon dioxide) as well as a stinking gas that kills people (hydrogen sulfide). He also reported on a gas that reeks of garlic (arsine). About mercury smelters, he wrote that inhaling the fumes, which have a sweet smell, makes the teeth fall out (fulminant mercury poisoning).

Agricola provided a vivid description of two kinds of arsenic poisoning. The one known as black foot disease causes gangrene, whereas the other, acute poisoning, makes the extremities swell without causing pain. He advised that miners must leave the mine immediately once such a condition has been recognized.

Agricola thought that mine foremen bore most of the responsibility for their workmen’s safety. They had to make sure ladders and shaft walls were kept in excellent condition, and that all machinery was always fully operable. He advised keeping the cold north winds out of the mineshafts so that the rungs of ladders could not freeze over—deadly falls were evidently as common as mudslides and collapsing tunnels. He admonished the miners, for the sake of their own safety, to be highly circumspect in their workplace surroundings.

All this said, Agricola was not free of mistakes. He knew metallic arsenic and zinc, but like everybody else considered them lead-tin and lead-silver alloys, respectively. He wrote about cadmia and cobalt, not knowing that these poorly defined, mostly lead- and arsenic-containing minerals, held new metals as minor constituents. He used the term molybdaena indiscriminately for a variety of minerals, by which means he defied his best purpose and created considerable confusion.

At the very end of Book VI, with reference to his earlier work on subterranean life forms (De Animantibus Subterraneis, 1549), he insisted on the existence of underground goblins or imps, harmless ones as well as malevolent ones called Kobold, closely associated with the very harmful mineral cobalt. Still, this must not detract from the fact that Agricola’s contribution to modernity is, basically, to have pushed wide open the gates to modern science.

Quotations: "I have omitted all those things which I have not myself seen, or have not read or heard of from persons upon whom I can rely. That which I have neither seen, nor carefully considered after reading or hearing of, I have not written about. The same rule must be understood with regard to all my instruction, whether I enjoin things which ought to be done, or describe things which are usual, or condemn things which are done." - Agricola, Preface to De Re Metallica, 1556.

"Albertus [Magnus] ... debased the doctrine of Aristotle with the itch of the chemists flowing with the bloody flux of quicksilver and the stench of sulphur."

"I realize that Galen called an earth which contained metallic particles a mixed earth when actually it is a composite earth. But it behooves one who teaches others to give exact names to everything."

"There are many arts and sciences of which a miner should not be ignorant. First there is Philosophy, that he may discern the origin, cause, and nature of subterranean things; for then he will be able to dig out the veins easily and advantageously, and to obtain more abundant results from his mining. Secondly there is Medicine, that he may be able to look after his diggers and other workman ... Thirdly follows astronomy, that he may know the divisions of the heavens and from them judge the directions of the veins. Fourthly, there is the science of Surveying that he may be able to estimate how deep a shaft should be sunk … Fifthly, his knowledge of Arithmetical Science should be such that he may calculate the cost to be incurred in the machinery and the working of the mine. Sixthly, his learning must comprise Architecture, that he himself may construct the various machines and timber work required underground … Next, he must have knowledge of Drawing, that he can draw plans of his machinery. Lastly, there is the Law, especially that dealing with metals, that he may claim his own rights, that he may undertake the duty of giving others his opinion on legal matters, that he may not take another man’s property and so make trouble for himself, and that he may fulfil his obligations to others according to the law."

"There are reported to be six species of metals, namely, gold, silver, iron, copper, tin, and lead. Actually there are more. Mercury is a metal although we differ on this point with the chemists. Plumbum cinereum (gray lead) which we call bisemutum was unknown to the older Greek writers. On the other hand, Ammonius writes correctly many metals are unknown to us, as well as many plants and animals."

The most fascinating quote appears in Book I of De Re Metallica, and makes it worth reading the whole opus: “… there is no compensation which should be thought great enough to equalize the extreme dangers to safety and life.” Not the kind of statement one expects from a Renaissance businessman.

Personality

From the very young age Georgius Agricola was gifted with a precocious intellect, which gave him a passion for learning.

Connections

When Agricola returned to Germany in the fall of 1526 from his trip to Carinthia, Styria, and the Tyrol, he had a wife, the widow of Thomas Meiner, director of the Schneeberg mining district.

When the black plague spread through Saxony in 1552-1553, Agricola worked day and night, going from the pesthouses to his family, always fearing that he would bring the contagion with him; one daughter did die of the plague. His first wife had died in 1541, and the following year he had married Anna Schütz, daughter of the guild master and smelter owner Ulrich Schütz, who had entrusted his wife and children to Agricola’s guardianship when he died in 1534.

Father:

Gregor Bauer

2nd wife:

Anna Schütz

Brother:

Hans Georg

Brother:

Franciscus Bauer

Franciscus served as a priest at Zwickau and later at Glauchau.

Friend:

Julius von Pflug

Julius von Pflug (1499 in Eythra – 3 September 1564 in Zeitz) was the last Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Naumburg from 1542 until his death. He was one of the most significant reformers involved with the Protestant Reformation. He was an old friend of Agricola, and it was him, who insisted that Agricola was interred in the cathedral at Zeitz.

mentor:

Heinrich Stromer von Auerbach

Heinrich Stromer (c. 1476 – 1542) was a physician of the German Renaissance, professor rector at the University of Leipzig and founder of Auerbachs Keller. He used to teach medicine in 1523 to Agricola while he was studying in Leipzig.

mentor:

Petrus Mosellanus

One of Agricola`s professors, Mosellanus, a former student of the great humanist, Erasmus, may have enticed Bauer to study ancient languages and become a teacher instead. During this time, according to the scholarly tradition of his days, Bauer Latinized his name to Georgius Agricola.

References

• Georgius Agricola de re Metallica, Metallic, from the 1St Latin Ed of Edition With Biographical Introduction, Annotations and Appendices Upon the ... Geology, Mineralogy Geology, Mining
• De Re Metallica
• Georgius Agricola De Re Metallica
• Georgius Agricola: Berggelehrter, Naturforscher, Humanist
• Georgius Agricola, 500 Jahre: Wissenschaftliche Konferenz
• Georgius Agricola
• Georgius Agricola, seine Zeit und ihre Spuren
• Prof. Dr. Otfried Wagenbreth: Bibliographie seiner Veröffentlichungen (Veröffentlichungen der Bibliothek "Georgius Agricola" der TU Bergakademie Freiberg)
• GEORGIUS AGRICOLA
• Georgius Agricola: Persönlichkeit und Wirken für den Bergbau und das Hüttenwesen des 16.
• Georgius Agricola 1494-1555.