FROBENIUS, JOANNES, an eminent German printer and scholar of the sixteenth century, was born at Hammelburg in Franconia. After completing his university career with great distinction at Basle, he established a printing office in that city about the year 1491, and was the first German who brought the art to anything like perfection. He superintended everything himself, and would allow nothing to pass through his press which he thought likely to prejudice the cause of letters or religion. Attracted by the high character of Frobenius as a man and as a printer, Erasmus fixed his residence at Basle, and was soon on terms of intimate and cordial friendship with him. A result
of this connection was that Erasmus not only had his own Frobisher works printed by his friend, but superintended editions of St Jerome, St Cyprian, Tertullian, Hilary of Poictiers, and St Ambrose. It was part of Frobenius' plan to have printed also editions of the Greek Fathers. He did not live to carry out this project, which however was very creditably executed by his son Jerome and his son-in-law Bischof or Episcopius. Frobenius died in 1527, in consequence of an accident which had befallen him some years before. An extant letter of Erasmus, written in the year of Frobenius' death, gives an epitome of his life and an estimate of his character, which was so amiable that Erasmus says he began at length to feel ashamed of his grief for the death of his friend, which was far more poignant than that which he had felt for the loss of his own brother. The epistle concludes with an epitaph on Frobenius in Greek and Latin, written by the great scholar himself.