STURM, Johann, better known by the name of Sturmius, a learned philologist and rhetorician, was born at Schleiden, near Cologne, on the 1st of October 1507. He afterwards pursued his study at Liege, in the College of St Jerome, and then went to Louvain in 1524. He there spent five years, three in learning and two in teaching.
Stuttgart. He set up a printing-press with Rudger Rescius, professor of Greek, and printed several Greek authors. In 1529 he went to Paris, where he was highly esteemed, and read public lectures on the Greek and Latin writers, and on logic. In 1537 he went to Strasburg, and the year following opened a school, which became famous, and by his means obtained of Maximilian II. the privileges of a university in the year 1566. He was very well skilled in polite literature, wrote Latin with great purity, and was an able teacher. His talents were not confined to the school; for he was frequently intrusted with deputation in Germany and foreign countries, and discharged these employments with great honour. He showed extreme charity to the refugees on account of religion: he not only laboured to assist them by his advice and recommendations, but he even impoverished himself to aid them. He died on the 3d of March 1589, in the eighty-second year of his age. He was a learned writer, and published various works, which were found to be useful and important by his contemporaries. One of these was an edition of Cicero, in 9 vols. 8vo. He bestowed much labour in elucidating the rhetorical works of Aristotle, Hermogenes, and Cicero. With the view of improving the system of education, he published several treatises, one of which was frequently reprinted. It is entitled De Literarum Ludis recte operiendis liber, Argent., 1538, 4to. F. A. Hallbauer edited a collection of his tracts under the title De Institutione Scholastica Opuscula omnia, Jenae, 1730, 8vo.