Editing Johann Heinrich Alsted

{{Short description|German Calvinist academic, 1588–1638}}
{{infobox philosopher
| image = Prof. Johann Heinrich Alsted Kupferstich 1610 (DSFSi04).jpg
| caption = 1610 drawing of Alsted
|region= [[Western philosophy]]
* [[German philosophy]]
* [[Hungarian philosophy]]
|era=[[Baroque philosophy]]
|influences={{flatlist|
* [[Ramon Llull]]
* [[Peter Ramus]]
}}
|influenced={{flatlist|
* [[Kazimierz Łyszczyński|Łyszczyński]]
* [[Comenius]]
}}
|main_interests=[[Pedagogy]], [[encyclopaedia]] writing
|notable_works=[[Encyclopaedia Cursus Philosophici]]
|birth_date=March 1588|birth_place=[[Mittenaar]], [[Holy Roman Empire]]|death_date=9 November 1638|death_place=[[Gyulafehérvár]], [[Principality of Transylvania (1570–1711)|Principality of Transylvania]]|notable_students=[[János Apáczai Csere]]}} 
'''Johann Heinrich Alsted''' (March 1588 – November 9, 1638), "the true parent of all the [[Encyclopedia|Encyclopædias]]",<ref name="s:Budget of Paradoxes/O">[[s:Budget of Paradoxes/O]].</ref> was a [[Germany|German]]-born [[Transylvanian Saxon]] [[Calvinist]] minister and academic, known for his varied interests: in [[Ramism]] and [[Lullism]], [[pedagogy]] and [[encyclopedia]]s, theology and [[millenarianism]]. His contemporaries noted that an anagram of Alstedius was ''sedulitas'', meaning "hard work" in Latin.<ref name = Ong/>

== Life ==
Alsted was born in [[Mittenaar]]. He was educated at [[Herborn Academy]] in the state of [[Hesse]], studying under [[Johannes Piscator]]. From 1606 he was at the [[University of Marburg]], taught by [[Rudolf Goclenius]], [[Gregorius Schönfeld]] and [[Raphaël Egli]]. The following year he went to [[Basel]], where his teachers were [[Leonhardt Zubler]] for mathematics, [[Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf]] for theology, and [[Johann Buxtorf]]. From about 1608 he returned to the Herborn Academy to teach as professor of [[philosophy]] and [[theology]].<ref name=Schol>{{in lang|fr}} [http://www.scholasticon.fr/Database/Scholastiques_fr.php?ID=143 Scholasticon page] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110824065948/http://www.scholasticon.fr/Database/Scholastiques_fr.php?ID=143 |date=2011-08-24 }}</ref>

Alsted was later in exile from the [[Thirty Years' War]] in [[Transylvania]], where he remained for the rest of his life. In 1629 he left war-torn Germany for [[Alba Iulia|Weißenburg]] (now Alba Iulia in [[Romania]]) to found a Calvinist Academy: the context was that the Transylvanian royal family had just returned from Unitarianism to Calvinism, and Alsted and [[Johannes Bisterfeld]] were German professors brought in to improve standards. Among the students there was [[János Apáczai Csere]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Apaczai.html |title=Apaczai biography |publisher=Gap-system.org |access-date=2012-03-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120331110836/http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Apaczai.html |archive-date=2012-03-31 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Alsted died in Alba Iulia in 1638.

==Works==

=== Encyclopedist ===
[[File:Vroomheid, Menselijkheid en het Laatste Oordeel Titelpagina voor Johann Heinrich Alsted, Encyclopaedia Septem tomis distincta, 1630, RP-P-1982-1217.jpg|thumb|Johann Heinrich Alsted. ''Encyclopaedia Septem tomis distincta''. Herborn: S.n., 1630]]
Alsted has been called 'one of the most important [[encyclopedist]]s of all time'.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://magyar-irodalom.elte.hu/contentware/marci/alstedfr.htm |title=Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–1638) |publisher=Magyar-irodalom.elte.hu |access-date=2012-03-15}}</ref> He was a prolific writer, and his ''Encyclopaedia'' (1630) long had a high reputation.  It was preceded by shorter works, including the 1608 ''Encyclopaedia cursus philosophici''. His major encyclopedia of 1630, the ''Encyclopaedia, Septem Tomis Distincta'', was divided into 35 books, and had 48 synoptical tables as well as an index. Alsted described it as "a methodical systemization of all things which ought to be learned by men in this life. In short, it is the totality of knowledge."<ref>{{Cite book|title=A Neglected Educator: Johann Heinrich Alsted|last=Alsted|first=Johann|publisher=W. A. Gullick|year=1910|pages=23}}</ref> In its time it was praised by [[Bernard Lamy (mathematician)|Bernard Lamy]] and [[Cotton Mather]], and it informed the work of Alsted's student [[John Amos Comenius]]. An unfinished encyclopedic project by [[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz]] began as a plan to expand and modernize it, and the famous diarist [[Samuel Pepys]] purchased a copy in 1660—thirty years after its initial publication.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Literature and Encyclopedism in Enlightenment Britain: the Pursuit of Complete Knowledge|author=Rudy, Seth|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|year=2014|isbn=9781137411532|location=Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England|pages=28|oclc=881655990}}</ref> Although [[Jacob Thomasius]] criticised it for [[plagiarism]] for verbatim copying without acknowledgment,<ref>{{cite EB1911|wstitle=Encyclopaedia}}</ref> [[Augustus De Morgan]] later called it "the true parent of all the Encyclopædias, or collections of treatises, or works in which that character predominates".<ref name="s:Budget of Paradoxes/O"/>

''The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy'', p.&nbsp;632, in the context of [[Calvinist metaphysics]], states

<blockquote>"In the works of authors like [[Clemens Timpler]] of Heidelberg and Steinfurt, [[Bartolomaeus Keckermann]] of Heidelberg and Danzig, and Johann Heinrich Alsted of Herborn there appeared a new, unified vision of the encyclopaedia of the scientific disciplines in which ontology had the role of assigning to each of the particular sciences its proper domain."</blockquote>

In his ''The New England Mind'', [[Perry Miller]] writes about the ''Encyclopaedia'':

:"It was indeed nothing short of a summary, in sequential and numbered paragraphs, of everything that the mind of European man had yet conceived or discovered. The works of over five hundred authors, from Aristotle to James I, were digested and methodized, including those of Aquinas, Scotus, and medieval theology, as also those of medieval science, such as ''De Natura Rerum''."<ref>''The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century'' (Harvard, 1982), pp. 102-103.</ref>

It was reissued as a 4-volume facsimile reprint, edited by W. Schmidt-Biggemann (Fromann-Holzboog Press, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1989–1990).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.frommann-holzboog.de/site/index_titelsuche.php |title=frommann-holzboog |publisher=Frommann-holzboog.de |access-date=2012-03-09 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120220101822/http://www.frommann-holzboog.de/site/index_titelsuche.php |archive-date=2012-02-20 }}</ref>

==== Alstedius' Encyclopedia Biblica ====
In 1610, Alstedius published the first edition of his Encyclopedia. In 1630, he published a second edition in a much more comprehensive form, in two large folio volumes. In the second edition, he professes to reduce the several branches of art and science then known and studied into a system. In this work, and his Encyclopedia Biblica, he tries to prove that the foundation and materials of the whole can be found in the Sacred Scriptures. The first four books contain an exposition of the various subjects to be discussed. He devotes six books to philology, ten to speculative philosophy, and four to practical matters. Then follow three on theology, jurisprudence, and medicine; three on mechanical arts, and five on history, chronology, and miscellanies. This work exhibited a great improvement on other published works that purported to be encyclopedias in the latter half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries.<ref>
{{cite book
|title=Proceedings of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society: volumes 6-7
|publisher=Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool
|page=88
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=svQAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA88 |year=1855
}}</ref>

=== Logician ===
Alsted published ''[[Logicae Systema Harmonicum]]'' (1614). In writing a semi-[[Ramism|Ramist]] encyclopedia, he then applied his conception of logic to the [[sum of human knowledge]].<ref name = Ong>{{Google books|ZSeEzVKMghoC|Ong, p. 299.|PA299}}</ref> To do that, he added the Lullist [[topical art of memory]] to Ramist [[topical logic]], indeed reversing one of the original conceptions of Ramus.<ref>Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie (editors), ''Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation: Studies in Intellectual Communication'' (2002), p. 47; [https://books.google.com/books?id=GXYEqXxjGlwC&pg=PA47 Google Books].</ref> He had a reputation in his own time as a distinctive methodologist. [[John Prideaux]] in 1639 asked:

<blockquote>Q. Is it true that the seven dialectical theories of method in use today, to wit, i) the Aristotelian, 2) the Lullian, 3) the Ramistic, 4) the Mixt, whether indeed in the manner of Keckermann or of Alsted, 5) the Forensic of [[François Hotman|Hotman]], 6) the Jesuitic, and 7) the Socinian,  differ mostly in respect to manner of treatment, not in respect to 
purpose?</blockquote>

To which the pupil's answer was to be "yes"; as it was to be to the question "Is it true that a Mixt ought to be preferred to a Peripatetic, a Ramist, a Lullian, and the others?"<ref>{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/stream/logicandrhetoric011815mbp#page/n325/mode/2up |title=Logic And Rhetoric In England 1500 1700 |access-date=2012-03-09|publisher=Russell & Russell |year=1961 }}</ref> A "Mixt" took elements from both Aristotle and Ramus; [[Philippo-Ramists]], who blended [[Melanchthon]] with Ramus, were a type of "Mixt"; "Systematics" were "Mixts" who followed Keckermann in a belief in system, as Alsted did.<ref name = Ong/>

=== Theologian ===
From his Transylvanian period dates Alsted's ''Prodromus'' (printed 1641, but dated 1635). The ''Prodromus'' was a Calvinist refutation of one of the most influential [[anti-Trinitarian]] works, ''De vera religione'' of [[Johannes Völkel]]. This work was a compendium of the arguments of Völkel's teacher [[Fausto Sozzini]], figurehead of the [[Polish Brethren|Polish Unitarian]] movement.<ref>Hotson, Howard: ''Paradise postponed. Johann Heinrich Alsted and the Birth of Calvinist Millenarianism''. Dordrecht 2001 p.67</ref>

== Publications ==
Alsted is now remembered as an encyclopedist, and for his millenarian views. His approach to the encyclopedia took two decades of preliminaries, and was an effort of integration of tools and theories to hand.<ref>Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie (editors), ''Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation: Studies in Intellectual Communication'' (2002), p. 46; [https://books.google.com/books?id=GXYEqXxjGlwC&pg=PA46 Google Books].</ref>

{| class="wikitable"
|-
| Sedulus in libris scribendis atque legendi
| Alstedius nomen Sedulitatis habet
| (''Encyclopaedia Scientiarum Omnium'', Leyden 1649, ad init.)
|}

In 1609 Alsted published ''Clavis artis Lullianae''.<ref>{{cite web|author=Johann Heinrich Alsted |url=https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4240175W/Clavis_artis_Lullianae |title=Open Library |publisher=Open Library |access-date=2012-03-09}}</ref> In 1610 he published the ''Artificium perorandi'' of [[Giordano Bruno]];<ref>Rossi, p. 89.</ref> and in the same year the ''Panacea philosophica'', an attempt to find the common ground in the work of [[Aristotle]], [[Raymond Lull]], and [[Petrus Ramus]].<ref>Rossi, p. 131.</ref> In 1612 Alsted edited the ''Explanatio'' of [[Bernard de Lavinheta]], a Lullist work.<ref>Rossi, p. 55.</ref> In 1613 he published an edition of the ''Systema systematum'' of [[Bartholomäus Keckermann]].<ref name=Schol/> ''Theologia naturalis'' (1615) was an apologetical work of [[natural theology]].<ref>Michael Sudduth, ''The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology'' (2009), p. 22; [https://books.google.com/books?id=BXJdWibi3akC&pg=PA22 Google Books].</ref>

* ''Clavis artis lullianae'' (1609).
* ''Panacea philosophica'' (1610).
* ''Metaphysica, tribus libris tractata'' (1613).
* ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=Zy9mAAAAcAAJ Methodus admirandorum mathematicorum completens novem libris matheseos universae]'' (1613) [[Herborn, Hesse|Herbornae Nassoviarum]]:Johann Heinrich Alsted
* ''Logicae Systema Harmonicum'' (1614).
* '' Theologia naturalis'' (1615).
* ''Cursus Philosophici Encyclopediae Libris XXVII'', 1620.
* ''Methodus sacrosanctae theologiae octo libris tradita in Quorum'' [[Hanau]]:Konrad Eifried
* ''Encyclopaedia septem tomis distincta: 1. Praecognita disciplinarum; 2. Philologia; 3. Philosophia theoretica; 4. Philosophia practica; 5. Tres superiores facultates; 6. Artes mechanicae; 7. Farragines disciplinarum'' (1630).
* ''Templum musicum'' (1664), {{OCLC|1070907097}}, 93 pp.

== See also ==
* ''[[Encyclopaedia Cursus Philosophici]]''

== References ==
* [[Walter J. Ong]] (2005), ''Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue. From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason'', Harvard University Press, 1958.
* {{cite book | first = Paolo| last = Rossi | year = 2000 | title = Logic and the Art of Memory |others=translated by Stephen Clucas | publisher = University of Chicago Press | isbn = 0-226-72826-9  }}

== Notes ==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==

* Cole, Percival R. (Percival Richard), 1879-1948 ''[https://archive.org/details/cu31924031775145 A neglected educator: Johann Heinrich Alsted]'' Sydney : W.A. Gullick 1910
* Hotson, Howard & [[Maria Rosa Antognazza]] (eds.), ''Alsted and Leibniz: on God, the Magistrate, and the Millennium'', Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999.
* Hotson, Howard. ''Johann Heinrich Alsted 1588-1638: Between Renaissance, Reformation, and Universal Reform'', Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.
* Hotson, Howard. ''Paradise Postponed. Johann Heinrich Alsted and the Birth of Calvinist Millenarianism'', Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000.
* McMahon, William. "The Semantics of Johann Alsted", in D. Cram, A. R. Linn, E. Nowak (eds.), ''History of Linguistics, 1996. Vol. 2: From Classical to Contemporary Linguistics'', Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1999, pp.&nbsp;123–129.
* {{cite encyclopedia  | last = Webster | first = Charles  | title = Alsted, Johann Heinrich  | encyclopedia = [[Dictionary of Scientific Biography]]  | volume = 1  | pages = 125–127   | publisher = Charles Scribner's Sons  | location = New York  | year = 1970  | isbn = 0-684-10114-9}}
{{Authority control}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Johann Heinrich Alsted}}
*{{Internet Archive author |sname=Johann Heinrich Alsted}}
*{{prdl|101}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alsted, Johann Heinrich}}
[[Category:1588 births]]
[[Category:1638 deaths]]
[[Category:17th-century apocalypticists]]
[[Category:17th-century Calvinist and Reformed theologians]]
[[Category:17th-century German Protestant theologians]]
[[Category:17th-century German male writers]]
[[Category:German Calvinist and Reformed theologians]]
[[Category:German encyclopedists]]
[[Category:German male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:German music theorists]]
[[Category:People from Lahn-Dill-Kreis]]
[[Category:Transylvanian Saxon people]]