Richard Croke

Richard Croke (* 1489 ?; † August 21 or 29, 1558 in London ), also Richard Crocus , was an English philologist and professor of the Greek language in Leipzig and Cambridge .

Life

Croke studied from 1505 at Eton and King's College of Cambridge University and then moved to Oxford . After stays in Paris , Leuven and Cologne , he was the first to take over the chair of Greek at the University of Leipzig in 1515 . Croke revolutionized the teaching of Greek in Leipzig, in which he not only taught the basics of grammar, but the entire Greek language. He praised the order and organization of the city with the saying: " Athens and Carthage would still flourish now if they had had such a council ". In 1516 he wrote the first Greek textbook for his students. In 1518 Croke returned, presumably through the mediation of Thomas More , but to his home at the University of Cambridge. His successor in Leipzig was the important humanist Petrus Mosellanus .

In 1519 he became professor at Cambridge as the successor to Erasmus von Rotterdam . Here, however, there was heated controversy and Croke had to put up with the most violent hostility from conservative theologians . Croke moved as court master to the court of King Henry VIII. In 1529/30 he was sent by the king on a diplomatic mission to Italy, where he was supposed to obtain positive opinions for a divorce and remarriage of the king from universities and theologians.

Upon his return, Croke went to Oxford University in 1532 , where he worked until his retirement in 1545.

Works

MR Croci Londoniensis Tabulae, grecas literas compendio discere cupientibus…. Schumann, Leipzig 1516, (online copy) of the Munich digitization center .

literature

Adalbert Horawitz : Croke, Richard . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, pp. 602-604.

Individual evidence

↑ Cf. Martin Szameitat: Konrad Heresbach - A Lower Rhine humanist between politics and erudition . (Series of publications by the Association for Rhenish Church History 177). Habelt, Bonn 2010, p. 53.

personal data
SURNAME	Croke, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Crokus, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	English philologist (Greek)
DATE OF BIRTH	around 1489
DATE OF DEATH	August 21, 1558 or August 29, 1558
Place of death	London

[1] Cf. Martin Szameitat: Konrad Heresbach - A Lower Rhine humanist between politics and erudition . (Series of publications by the Association for Rhenish Church History 177). Habelt, Bonn 2010, p. 53.