CAMERARIUS, JOACHIM, belonged to an ancient noble family, of the name of Liebhard, which he exchanged for that of Came2-arins, from the circumstance that several of his ancestors had filled the office of chamberlain (Kammerer) to the bishops of Bamberg. He was bons at Bamberg, April 12, 1500. In 1515 he entered the University of Leipzig. Such was his proficiency in classical literature that he was elected Professor of Greek at Erfurt in 1521, where he embraced the principles of the Reformation. The plague, and the unsettled state of the university, occasioned his removing to Wittenberg, where he formed an intimate friend ship with Melanchthon, at whose recommendation he was made Professor of History and the Greek language at Nurnberg in 1526. In 1530 he was one of the deputies to the Diet at Augsburg, where he took a leading part with Melanchthon. Under the patronage of Duke Ulrich he removed to the Univer sity of Tlibingen, where he composed his Elements of Rhetoric. In 1541 he was employed by the Dukes Henry and Maurice of Saxony to remodel the University of Leipsic. In 1555 he again went as a deputy to the Diet at Augsburg, and in the year following to Regensburg. During the last years of his life he withdrew almost entirely from public affairs, and died at Leipsic April 15, 1574, leaving behind him five sons, all men of worth and reputa tion ; one of them, especially Joachim, attained to great eminence as a botanist, and practised as a physician at his native place, Niirnburg. (Born Nov.
5, died 1598).
Camerarius was a man of the strictest integrity, quiet and taciturn ; disposed to moderation, but of great energy and perseverance in the two great objects to which he devoted his life, the cultivation of classical learning and the advancement of the Reformation. To the former he contributed by numerous editions of the Greek and Latin classics (of which a list is given by Fabricius in his Biblio theca Gnaca) and by the improvements he intro duced into several of the German Universities. The latter he aided by his advocacy on important public occasions, and by various writings on theo logical and ecclesiastical subjects. Of his works on biblical subjects, the following are the principal : —Sententio et sapientia Siracid ; Notatio figura rum sermanir in libris Evv. et apostol. seer.; His toria 7. Christi ; Homilice. He wrote a biography of Prince George of Anhalt, 1555 (republished with a German translation by Schubert 1853) and a memoir of Melanchthon (iVarratio de Ph. Mel. arta, totius vitae curricula et morte, etc.) 1566, re published with notes and documents by Strobel, Halle, 1777 ; also Melanchthon's letters in 1569. (Herzog's Encycksiidie, vol. ii. p. 542, and Con versations Lexicon, Leipzig, 1843, vol. iii. p. 142.) —J. E. R.