a Saxon divine, born at Eisleben in 1492. He went as chaplain to Count Mansfield, when that nobleman attended the Elector of Saxony to the diet at Spire in 1529, and that of Augsburg in 1530. He was of a restless, ambitious temper, rivalled and wrote against Melanchthon, and gave Count Mansfield occasion to reproach him severely. He obtained a professorship at Wittemberg, where he taught peculiar doctrines, and became founder of Agricola the sect of Antinomians; which occasioned warm disputes between him and Luther, who had before been his attached friend. But though he was never able to recover the favour either of the Elector of Saxony or of Luther, he received some consolation from the fame he acquired at Berlin, where he became preacher at court; and was chosen, in 1548, in conjunction with Julius Philag and Michael Heldingus, to compose the famous Interim. He died at Berlin in 1566. His real name was Schnitter or Schneider.

Agricola, Rodolphus, one of the most eminent scholars of the fifteenth century. He was born near Groningen in Friesland, in 1443, and died at Heidelberg in 1485. He was educated at Louvain; and travelling into Italy, became the pupil of Theodore Gaza in Greek, at Ferrara, for about two years; and at the same time gave instructions on the language and literature of ancient Rome. He was not only a profound scholar, but had much skill in painting and music. In his treatise De Inventione Dialectica, he clearly saw and tried to remedy the defects of the then prevalent scholastic philosophy. His real name was Rolof Huysmann.