Goldast

Melchior Goldast von Haiminsfeld (Goldastus) (6 January 1576 or 1578, Switzerland – Gießen, Germany, 1635) was a Swiss jurist and an industrious though uncritical collector of documents relating to the medieval history and constitution of Germany. He was a Calvinist writer of note.

Life

He was born to poor Protestant parents near Bischofszell, in the Swiss canton of Thurgau. His university career, first at Ingolstadt (1595–1596) and then at Altdorf bei Nürnberg (1597–1598), was cut short by his poverty, from which he suffered all his life and which was the main cause of his wanderings. In 1598, he found a rich protector in Bartholomaeus Schobinger of St. Gall, who enabled him to study at St. Gall (where he first became interested in medieval documents, which abound in the Abbey of St. Gall) and elsewhere in Switzerland. The year before his patron's death in 1604, he became secretary to Henri, duc de Bouillon, with whom he went to Heidelberg and Frankfurt. In 1604, he entered the service of the Baron von Hohensax, the possessor of the Codex Manesse, the precious manuscript volume of old German ''Minnesänger'' of which Goldast published excerpts.

Soon he was back in Switzerland, and by 1606 in Frankfurt, earning his living by preparing and correcting books for the press. In 1611, he was appointed councillor at the court of Saxe-Weimar, and in 1615 he entered the service of Graf Ernst von Schaumburg at Buckeburg. In 1624, he was forced by developments in the Thirty Years War to retire to Bremen; there in 1625, he deposited his library in that of the town, he himself returning to Frankfurt. In 1627, he became councillor to Emperor Ferdinand II and to the archbishop-elector of Trier. He died at Gießen early in 1635.

Publications

His immense industry is shown by the fact that his biographer, Heinrich Christian Senckenberg, gives a list of 65 works published or written by him, some extending to several substantial volumes. Among the more important are his ''Paraeneticorum veterum pars i.'' (1604), which contained the old German tales of Kunig Tyrol von Schotten, the Winsbeke and the Winsbekin; ''Suevicarum rerum scriptores'' (Frankfurt, 1605, new edition, 1727); ''Rerum Alamannicarum scriptores'' (Frankfurt, 1606, new edition by Senckenburg, 1730); ''Constitutiones imperiales'' (Frankfurt, 1607–1613, 4 vols.); ''Monarchia sacri Romani imperii'' (Hanover and Frankfurt, 1612–1614, 3 vols.); and ''Commentarii de regni Bohemiae juribus'' (Frankfurt, 1627, new edition by Schmink, 1719). He also edited Jacques Auguste de Thou's ''Historia sui temporis'' (1609–1610) and the works of Willibald Pirckheimer (1610).

In 1688, a volume of letters addressed to him by his learned friends was published.

He is generally considered to be the forger of the ''Soranian Letters'', supposedly the correspondence between Antony, Cleopatra, and the physician Soranus.

Notes

References

Bibliography

*
*Andrew, J. N., ''History of the Sabbath and First Day of the Week'' (2nd ed.), Battle Creek, Michigan: Steam Press of the Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Assn., 1873.
* This work in turn cites:
**Heinrich Christian Senckenberg, ''Life'' prefixed to his 1730 edition of Goldast's ''Works''.
** R. von Raumer, ''Geschichte der germanischen Philologie'' (Munich, 1870).

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goldast, Melchior
1570s births
1635 deaths
People from Weinfelden District
16th-century Swiss historians
Swiss male writers
Swiss Renaissance humanists
17th-century Swiss historians