The New International Encyclopædia/Münster, Sebastian

MÜNSTER, mụn′stẽr, Sebastian (1489-1552). A German theologian and geographer. He was born at Ingelheim, studied at Heidelberg and Tübingen, and in 1529 left the Catholic Church for the Reformed. He was professor of theology and Hebrew at Heidelberg until 1536, when he became professor of mathematics at Basel. He edited in 1534 the first Hebrew Bible to appear under the care of a German. But his chief work was his Cosmographia (1544), a geography which was translated into Italian, French, and Latin, and passed through twenty-four editions in a hundred years.