AGRICOLA, George, a German physician, famous for his skill in metals. He was born at Glaucha, in Misnia, the 24th of March 1494. The discoveries which he made in the mountains of Bohemia, gave him so great a desire of examining accurately into every thing relating to metals, that though he had engaged in the practice of physic at Joachimstal by advice of his friends, he still prosecuted his study of fossils with great assiduity; and at length removed to Chemnitz, where he entirely devoted himself to this study. He spent in pursuit of it the pension he had of Maurice duke of Saxony, and part of his own estate; so that he reaped more reputation than profit from his labours. He wrote several pieces upon this and other subjects; and died at Chemnitz the 21st of November 1555, a very firm Papist. In his younger years he seemed not averse to the Protestant doctrine; and he highly disapproved of the scandalous traffic of indulgences, and several other things in the church of Rome. The following lines of his were posted up in the streets of Zwickaw, in the year 1519:
Si nos injecta salvebit cistula nummo,
Heu nimium infelix tu mihi, pauper, eris!
Si nos, Christe, tua servatos morte beasti,
Tum nihil infelix tu mihi, pauper, eris.
If wealth alone salvation can procure,
How sad a state for ever waits the poor!
But if thou, Christ, our only saviour be,
Thy merits still may bless ev'n poverty!
In the latter part of his life, however, he had attacked the Protestant religion: which rendered him so odious to the Lutherans, that they suffered his body to remain unburied for five days together; so that it was obliged to be removed from Chemnitz to Zeitz, where it was interred in the principal church.