SPALATIN, GEORGE, the name taken by George Burk hardt an important figure in the history of the Reformation, who was born on Jan. 17, 1484, at Spalt (whence he assumed the name Spalatinus), near Nuremberg, where his father was a tanner. He went to school at Nuremberg, and after wards to the university of Erfurt, where he took his bachelor's degree in 1499. There Nikolaus Marschalk, the most influential professor, made Spalatin his amanuensis and took him to the new university of Wittenberg in 1502. In 1505 Spalatin returned to Erfurt to study jurisprudence, and was welcomed by the little band of German humanists of whom Mutianus was chief. He became a teacher in the monastery at Georgenthal, and in 1508 he was ordained priest by Bishop Johann von Laasphe, who had ordained Luther. In 1509 Mutianus recommended him to Fred erick III. the Wise, the elector of Saxony, who made him tutor to his nephew, the future elector, John Frederick. The elector sent him to Wittenberg in 1511 and procured for him a canon's stall in Altenburg. He managed all the elector's correspondence.
Spalatin's letters to Luther have been lost, but Luther's an swers remain, and are extremely interesting. Spalatin read Luther's writings to the elector, and translated for his benefit those in Latin into German. He would have dissuaded Luther again and again from publishing books or engaging in overt acts against the papacy, but when the thing was done none was so ready to trans late the book or to justify the act.
On the death of Frederick the Wise in 1525 Spalatin no longer lived at the Saxon court. But he attended the imperial diets, and was the constant and valued adviser of the electors, John and John Frederick. During the later portion of his life, from 1526 onwards, he was chiefly engaged in the visitation of churches and schools in electoral Saxony, reporting on the confiscation and application of ecclesiastical revenues and he was asked to under take the same work for Albertine Saxony. He was also per manent visitor of Wittenberg University. He died on Jan. 26, 1545, at Altenburg.
His writings include: Annales reformations, edited by E. S. Cyprian (Leipzig, 1718) ; and "Das Leben und die Zeitgeschichte Friedrichs des Weisen," published in Georg Spalatins Historischer Nachlass und Briefe, edited by C. G. Neudecker and L. Preller (Jena, 1851). A list of them may be found in A. Seelheim's George Spalatin als sacks. Historiographer (1876). There is no good life of Spalatin, nor can there be until his letters have been collected and edited, a work still to be done. There is an excellent article on Spalatin, by T. Kolde, in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopadie, Bd. xviii. (1906).