RHENANUS, BEATUS (C. 1485-1547), Germau human-ist, was born about 1485 at Schlettstadt in Alsace, where his father, a native of Rheinau, was a prosperous butcher. He received his early education in Schlettstadt, and afterwards (1503) went to Paris, where he came under the influence of Faber Stapulensis ; here, among his other learned pursuits, we must include that of correcting the press for Henry Estienne. In 1511 he removed to Basel, where he became intimate with Erasmus, and took an active share in the publishing enterprises of Frobenius. Some time after 1520 he became a comparatively wealthy man through the death of his father ; returning to Schlettstadt he devoted himself to a life of learned leisure, enlivened with free epistolary and personal intercourse with Erasmus, Reuchlin, Pirckheimer, Lasky, 4ind many other scholars of his time. He died at Strasburg, while returning from Baden in Switzerland, whither he had gone for his health, in 1547, leaving behind him a high reputa-tion not only for sound learning but also for singular gentleness, modesty, and simplicity.

His earliest publication was a life of Geller of Strasburg (1510). Of his subsequent works the principal are Perm Germanicarum Libri III. (1531), and editions of Velleius Paterculus (ed. princeps, from a MS. discovered by himself, 1520) ; Tacitus (1533, exclusive of the Histories); Livy (1535); and Erasmus (with a life, 9 vols. fol., 1540-41).