Jacob Masen (28 March 1606 - 27 September 1681) was a German Jesuit

priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particu ...

, historian,

dramatist A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

and

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing th ...

. He is known as a prolific writer in Latin.James J. Mertz, John P. Murphy, ''Jesuit Latin Poets of the 17th and 18th Centuries: an anthology of neo-Latin poetry'' (1989), p.153.

Life

He was born at Dahlen in

Jülich Jülich (; in old spellings also known as ''Guelich'' or ''Gülich'', nl, Gulik, french: Juliers, Ripuarian: ''Jöllesch'') is a town in the district of Düren, in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. As a border region betwe ...

, and studied in Cologne. Having entered the Order of Jesus in 1629, he taught poetry and rhetoric in the Lower Rhine region. After theological studies he was ordained

between 1639 and 1641. On the 3 May 1648 he took his final vows in Cologne. where he also acted as a

preacher A preacher is a person who delivers sermons or homilies on religious topics to an assembly of people. Less common are preachers who preach on the street, or those whose message is not necessarily religious, but who preach components such as a ...

. He also acted in

Paderborn Paderborn (; Westphalian: ''Patterbuorn'', also ''Paterboärn'') is a city in eastern North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, capital of the Paderborn district. The name of the city derives from the river Pader and ''Born'', an old German term for th ...

and

Trier Trier ( , ; lb, Tréier ), formerly known in English as Trèves ( ;) and Triers (see also names in other languages), is a city on the banks of the Moselle in Germany. It lies in a valley between low vine-covered hills of red sandstone in the ...

. He died, aged 75, in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

Works

He completed a substantial antiquarian work on Trier by

Christoph Brouwer Christoph Brouwer (or ''Browerius'') (12 March 1559 – 1617) was a Jesuit priest of the Netherlands, and ecclesiastical historian. He is particularly known for his contribution to the history of the Archdiocese of Trier. Life Brouwer was bor ...

. His epic poem ''Sarcotis'' (1654) became notorious in the 18th century, after William Lauder alleged that

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and polit ...

had plagiarised it in writing ''

Paradise Lost ''Paradise Lost'' is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consists of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. A second edition followed in 1674 ...

''. With Jacob Bidermann, he was one of the most important Jesuit dramatists influencing German drama.Leonard Foster, ''Neo-Latin Tradition and Vernacular Poetry'', p. 100, in Gerhart Hoffmeister (editor), ''German Baroque Literature: The European Perspective'' (1983).

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External links

* http://www.kirchenlexikon.de/m/masen_j.shtml {{DEFAULTSORT:Masen, Jacob 1606 births 1681 deaths 17th-century German Jesuits German poets German male poets German male dramatists and playwrights 17th-century German dramatists and playwrights 17th-century German male writers

Life

Works

Notes

Further reading

External links