Georgius Hornius
Georgius Hornius (Georg Horn, 1620–1670) was a German historian and geographer, professor of history at Leiden University from 1653 until his death. Life. He was born in Kemnath, Upper Palatinate (at the time part of the Electoral Palatinate under Frederick V) as the son of the superintendent of the Reformed church there. His family was forced to move away in the wake of the Catholic victory at White Mountain, when Horn was still an infant. In 1635, he visited the gymnasium in Nuremberg, and in 1637 he was enrolled in University of Altdorf as a student of theology  and medicine. He later worked as a private tutor, in Gröningen and later in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic. In Leiden, he was also enrolled as a student of Friedrich Spanheim. After a two year's sojourn in England, he returned to Leiden, compiling a history of the events of the ongoing English Civil War ("Rerum Britannicarum libri VII", "De statu ecclesiae Britannicae hodierno"). In 1648, he completed a doctorate in Leiden and refused calls to both Frankfurt University and Heidelberg University as professor of theology, instead accepting the position of professor of history, politics and geography at the new  University of Harderwijk, where he became rector in 1652. In 1653, he became professor of history at Leiden University, a position he held until his death in 1670. In his later life, Horn was also greatly interested in alchemy. In 1665, he was swindled out of the considerable sum of 5,000 guilders by a fraudulent alchemist. His interest in alchemy als resulted in an edition of Pseudo-Geber in 1668. From about this time, he also began to suffer from intermittent spells of mental distraction, although he remained a prolific writer until his death. Among his publications, his Latin works  on universal history, intended as a textbook for students, wer especially influential ("Historia ecclesiastica et politica", "Arca Noae", "Orbis Politicus", "Orbis Imperans"). These works were re-published long after his death in both the Netherlands and Germany. His treated universal history in a modern manner, no longer divided into the history of the four classical empires (Assyria, Persia, Macedon, Rome) but based on the concept of national history, including the history of the peoples of the New World ("De originibus Americanis"). He was also one of the earliest historiographers to divide world history into three major epochs, antiquity from earliest  times until the Migration period, the middle period from the Migration period to the year 1500, and modern history from 1500 to his own day. His coverage of the Migration period is presented as the history of the "Scythian" nation, which is divided into Germans, Huns and Slavs. In all his works, Horn presents himself as a pious Protestant and as a patriot of his homeland, considering himself a native of and exile from the Upper Palatinate (which had been annexed by the Catholic Duke of Bavaria in 1628). posthumous editions: Works. translations: