Life and Character

The Hoovers start their book with a sketch of Agricola's life and character. Agricola lived soon after the voyage of Columbus and the invention of the printing press. Martin Luther posted his 95 theses in 1517, when Agricola was in his twenties. His career shows a breadth and depth of interests, as well as a steadfast adherence to Catholicism while living right at the heart of the Reformation, in Saxony.

Agricola studied the arts at the University at Leipzig, and for a time was a schoolteacher and principal. Later he did further university studies in Italy, this time in science. He worked as a town physician, and later held various appointive positions in his community of Chemnitz.

He studied mining intensively, both by visiting and studying the mines firsthand, consulting with miners, reading everything he could find that the ancients wrote about mining. He was invested in a mine known as "God's Gift." He worked on De Re Metallica for about twenty years. In translating the work, Herbert Hoover also draws on study, experience and the literature.

The Hoovers say that Agricola remained a Catholic, this was probably quite difficult when the local church went Lutheran. Did he even have access to a faith community? He doesn't seem to have been ostracized in his community, but rather the opposite. He was appointed a Burgomeister, and sometimes served as an ambassador to Catholic Austria. Sadly, he was denied burial in his local church and had to be taken out of town.

The Hoovers take a message from Agricola's life about bipartisanship. He must have had some special qualities that helped him succeed without needing to conform his religious views to others. "To deduce Georgius Agricola's character we need not search beyond the discovery of his steadfast adherence to the religion of his fathers amid the bitter storm of Protestantism around him, and need but to remember that for twenty-five years he was entrusted with elective positions of an increasingly important character in this same community. No man could have thus held the respect of his countrymen unless he were devoid of bigotry and possessed of the highest sense of integrity, justice, humanity, and patriotism."