Jakob Balde

Jakob Balde
(1604-1668)
(source: Kurt Scheuerer - Materialsammlung zur Geschichte von Ingolstadt)
no copyright infringement intended

A collected edition of his works in 4 volumes was published at Cologne in 1660; a more complete edition in 8 volumes at Munich, 1729; also a good selection by Louis Spach (Paris and Strasbourg, 1871); an edition of his Latin lyrics appeared at Regensburg in 1884; there are translations into German of some of his odes by Johann Gottfried Herder (1795), and J. Schrott and M. Schleich (Munich, 1870); various odes have been translated into English by Karl Maurer; more info in G. Westermayer, Jacobus Balde, sein Leben und seine Werke, 1868; J. Bach, Jakob Balde, Freiburg, 1904 (wiki).

He was studying law, when a love disappointment turned him to the church. In 1624 Jakob Balde entered the Society of Jesus, in 1633 he was ordained a priest. Meanwhile he continued his studies of the humanities, taught rhetoric at Innsbruck and Ingolstadt, where he studied also theology. His lectures and poems made him famous and he became the most important German Neo-Latin poet of his century: Germany's Horatio.

In the opinion of his contemporaries, Jakob Balde revived the glories of the Augustan age; Pope Alexander VII and the scholars of the Netherlands combined to do him honor; even Herder regarded him as a greater poet than Horace; while such judgments are naturally exaggerated, there is no doubt that he takes a very high place among modern Latin poets (Encyclopedia Britannica).

(Works of Jakob Balde onLine - Project CAMENA)



(Classics)

(German and Nordic Literature)