1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gregorovius, Ferdinand

GREGOROVIUS, FERDINAND (1821–1891), German historian, was born at Neidenburg on the 19th of January 1821, and studied at the university of Königsberg. After spending some years in teaching he took up his residence in Italy in 1852, remaining in that country for over twenty years. He was made a citizen of Rome, and he died at Munich on the 1st of May 1891. Gregorovius’s interest in and acquaintance with Italy and Italian history is mainly responsible for his great book, Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1859–1872, and other editions), a work of much erudition and interest, which has been translated into English by A. Hamilton (13 vols., 1894–1900), and also into Italian at the expense of the Romans (Venice, 1874–1876). It deals with the history of Rome from about A.D. 400 to the death of Pope Clement VII. in 1534, and in the words of its author it describes “how, from the time of Charles the Great to that of Charles V., the historic system of the papacy remained inseparable from that of the Empire.” The other works of Gregorovius include: Geschichte des Kaisers Hadrian und seiner Zeit (Königsberg, 1851), English translation by M. E. Robinson (1898); Corsica (Stuttgart, 1854), English translation by R. Martineau (1855); Lucrezia Borgia (Stuttgart, 1874), English translation by J. L. Garner (1904); Die Grabdenkmäler der Päpste (Leipzig, 1881), English translation by R. W. Seton-Watson (1903); Wanderjahre in Italien (5 vols., Leipzig, 1888–1892); Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter (1889); Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte der Kultur (Leipzig, 1887–1892); and Urban VIII. im Widerspruch zu Spanien und dem Kaiser (Stuttgart, 1879). This last work was translated into Italian by the author himself (Rome, 1879). Gregorovius was also something of a poet; he wrote a drama, Der Tod des Tiberius (1851), and some Gedichte (Leipzig, 1891).

His Römische Tagebücher were edited by F. Althaus (Stuttgart, 1892), and were translated into English as the Roman Journals of F. Gregorovius, by A. Hamilton (1907).