All Scholars

Born in Prague, Gelen (also known as Sigismund Gelenius) was taken to Pavia and Bologna at the age of thirteen by the canon Wenceslas von Pisek. After study there, Gelen moved to Venice where he deepened his knowledge of Greek under the tutelage of Marcus Mursurus (1470-1517), a native of Crete. After travel to Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, Gelen returned to Bohemia where, owing to his father’s death and lack of financial support due to his extensive travels, he lectured on Greek subjects in Prague, but found the university inhospitable. He moved permanently to Basel in 1524, where he would spend the remaining decades of his life working for the Officina Frobeniana, a press operated by the Froben brothers, Johan (-1527) and Hieronymus (1501-63). At the press he assisted the humanist Beatus Rhenanus (1485-1547) and wrote prefaces to the works he edited with great care and erudition. His translations and carefully proofread editions for the press caught the eye of Erasmus (1466-1536) to whom Gelen became personally and professionally close. Gelen was committed to the making the publications from Basel recognized throughout Europe, even to the point of declining an offer from Philip Melancthon (1497-1560) of a professorship at Nuremberg. He translated Suetonius and some Plutarch along with Erasmus’s Moriae into his native Czech. He edited a number of ancient authors and collaborated with Rhenanus on editions of Livy and Tertullian.  Gelen’s only original work was his Lexicon symphonum, a comparative dictionary of four languages that demonstrates affinities between Greek, Latin, Germanic, and Slavic idioms.