Münster, Sebastian

Münster, Sebastian (sābäs`tyän' mün`stər), 1489–1552, German scholar and geographer. He was a Franciscan monk but after the Reformation became a Protestant and taught at Heidelberg and at Basel, where he lived after 1536. A noted theologian and Hebraist, he edited the first Hebrew Bible produced (1534–35) by a German. His chief work is the Cosmographia universalis (1544), a descriptive geography standard for more than a century and translated into several languages.