Background
Jakob Balde was born on the 4th of January, 1604 in Ensisheim, canton of Ensisheim, France.
Jakob Balde was born on the 4th of January, 1604 in Ensisheim, canton of Ensisheim, France.
Driven from Alsace by the marauding bands of Count Mansfeld, Jakob Balde fled to Ingolstadt where he began to study law. Continuing his study of the humanities, he became in 1628 professor of rhetoric at Innsbruck, and in 1635 at Ingolstadt, whither he had been transferred by his superiors in order to study theology. In 1633 he was ordained a priest.
Jakob Balde's lectures and poems had now made him famous, and he was summoned to Munich where, in 1638, he became court chaplain to the elector Maximilian I. He remained in Munich till 1650, when he went to live at Landshut and afterwards at Amberg. In 1654 Jakob Balde was transferred to Neuburg on the Danube, as court preacher and confessor to the count palatine. He remained at Neuburg for the rest of his life. A collected edition of Balde's works in 4 vols was published at Cologne in 1660. A more complete edition in 8 vols at Munich, 1729.
In the opinion of his contemporaries, Balde revived the glories of the Augustan age, and Pope Alexander VII and the scholars of the Netherlands combined to do him honour; even Herder regarded him as a greater poet than Horace.
