Hieronymus Wolf

Hieronymus Wolf (1516 - 1580), Humanistic historian and German of the 16th century, is known to have founded a system of Byzantine historiography, become the standard concerning work on the medieval Greek history.

Born with Ottingen, in Germany, it is the student one of Philippe Melanchthon. Hieronymus Wolf was educated according to the ideals of the incipient humanistic movement and studied much Greek and Latin works. In 1537, he becomes secretary and librarian with the library of Augsburg, where he studies and translates many Greek texts, ancient and medieval.

Until this time, there was no distinction between ancient and medieval Greek works. Moreover, medieval works secondary were compared with the interest carried to the classic authors. Wolf, was interested in the Greek history and published its work in 1557 under the title Corpus Historiae Byzantinae . The impact of this work on the long run was important because it will be used as foundations with future work on the Greek medieval history.

At the beginning of the 17th century, Louis XIV caused an assembly of all Byzantine works, and made call for that with several scholars of the whole world. The work of Hieronymus Wolf was used as a basis for this work. The result was a Corpus Historiae Byzantinae in 34 volumes. This edition popularized the terms Byzantine and Byzantine Empire which became used in the historical studies thereafter.

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