Johann Heinrich Alsted 1588-1638

Johann Heinrich Alsted, professor of philosophy and theology at the Calvinist academy of Herborn, was a man of many parts. A deputy to the famous Synod of Dort and the greatest encyclopedist of his age, he was also a pioneer of Calvinist millenarianism and a devoted student of astrology, alchemy, Lullism, and the works of Giordano Bruno. Alsted's intellectual biography opens up unexpected perspectives on the reforming movements of the seventeenth century, and provides an invaluable introduction to many of the central ideas, individuals and institutions of this neglected era of central European intellectual history.