Burchard Adam Sellius

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Burchard Adam Sellius (baptized on 22. July 1707 in Tonder , † December 7 . Jul / 18th December  1745 . Greg in the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg ) was a historian.

Life

Burchard Adam Sellius was a son of Friedrich Adam Sellius and his wife Marie Elisabeth, nee Giese. The mother was the daughter of Tondern councilor Burchard Giese and had previously married Claus Langheim on July 27, 1702, who had died in March 1705. Sellius' mother died shortly after giving birth to her son and was buried on March 10, 1711. At this point the father had been in debt for a long time and moved out of Tondern. Sellius then lived with his grandfather Burchard Giese, who died in 1718. He then moved in with his uncle and councilor Peter Giese.

Sellius went to school in Tondern and began studying theology in 1725. From the beginning of 1727 he called himself stud. med. In July / August 1728 he toured Erfurt and Leipzig and then lived for some time in Halle and returned from there in November 1728. In March 1729 he enrolled at the University of Kiel and devoted himself to medical and historical studies. In April 1729 he spoke in a public disputation. In 1731 he published a bibliography on anatomical literature. He planned to compile documents and chronicles of places and regions and based on this to work out the "Historical News of Schleswig and Holstein", but stopped the work at an early stage.

In June 1732 Sellius moved via Danzig to Saint Petersburg and initially worked there as a tutor. In 1734 he got a job as a Latin teacher at the seminary of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. During this time he was in contact with the Academy of Sciences , where for example Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer worked, who obviously took advantage of Sellius' interest in bibliography. Sellius published an annotated bibliography on contemporary political and church history in Russia, which was an important resource at the time. The work was published in 1736 in Reval in Latin and in 1815 in Moscow in Russian. He also worked as a translator for the academy.

In May 1736 Sellius moved to Moscow and worked there for a Russian nobleman. He often visited monasteries and tried to find documents and chronicles about the history of Russia. The theologian Peder von Haven met him in Moscow in 1738/39 and noted that Sellius spoke good Danish, German and German, but stuttered heavily. When he was studying theology, however, he was able to give sermons fluently.

In 1741 Sellius served the royal personal surgeon and Count Johann Hermann von L'Estocq , but found no patrons who could offer him a sufficient income. He himself said that neither the academy nor the count had paid him. The Danish Chargé d'affaires, Legation Secretary Johann Koefoed, for whom Sellius wrote and translated, initially paid him 120 rubles in 1743, then smaller amounts. At the beginning of 1745 Matthias Reinhold von Jessen followed Koefoed and agreed to reward Sellius, which he never did.

Sellius decided to live as a monk and went to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. When he converted to the Russian Orthodox Church in October 1744, he was given the first name Nikolaj . In March 1745 he was given the monk's robe as Nikodim . During this time he dealt primarily with sources on the history of the Russian Church. From the last letters he wrote with a kind of gallows humor, it can be seen that he was disappointed in a certain way and that the fasting ceremonies before an inauguration in particular were hard. He probably chose to live as a monk in order to more easily visit monastery archives that kept manuscripts, or for the simple reason that he could concentrate on his studies.

Sellius died shortly after entering the monastery, unmarried and childless. According to P. v. Havens, Sellius had suffered from an internal ulcer before his conversion, which led to death within a short time as a result of his monastic life.

Works

Sellius left manuscripts and 15-volume records that were added to the seminary's library, which probably no longer existed. The “Historical Mirror of the Regents of Russia”, which he wrote in Latin verse, was translated into Russian at the time and given to Tsarina Elisabeth. Sellis used as a basis, the Primary Chronicle and created the first complete representation of Russian history. This was not printed until 1773 and 1788.

Sellius produced a significant piece of work with “De Rossorum hierarchia”. In it he listed exactly all Russian churches and monasteries and provided the representation with precise details of the sources. He co-founded research on the country's church history.

literature

  • Vello Helk : Sellius, Burchard Adam . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , pages 240-242.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vello Helk: Sellius, Burchard Adam . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , page 241.
  2. ^ Vello Helk: Sellius, Burchard Adam . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , page 241.
  3. ↑ From this seminar the Spiritual Academy Saint Petersburg emerged.
  4. ^ Vello Helk: Sellius, Burchard Adam . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , page 241.
  5. ^ Vello Helk: Sellius, Burchard Adam . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , page 241.
  6. ^ Vello Helk: Sellius, Burchard Adam . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , page 241.
  7. ^ Vello Helk: Sellius, Burchard Adam . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , pages 241-242.
  8. ^ Vello Helk: Sellius, Burchard Adam . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , page 242.
  9. ^ Vello Helk: Sellius, Burchard Adam . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , page 242.
  10. ^ Vello Helk: Sellius, Burchard Adam . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , page 242.
personal data
SURNAME Sellius, Burchard Adam
BRIEF DESCRIPTION historian
DATE OF BIRTH baptized July 22, 1707
PLACE OF BIRTH Tondern
DATE OF DEATH December 18, 1745
Place of death Alexander Nevsky Convent near Saint Petersburg