Johann Hasler (born 1548, died after 1602), also known as Haslerus, was a 16th-century Swiss theologian and physician. He is known for his association with a group of antitrinitarians including Johann Sylvan and Adam Neuser and for developing Galen's concept of heat and cold into the idea of a scale of temperature.
Johann Hasler was born in December 1548 at Oberdiessbach in the canton of Bern. After attending the municipal school he studied at the University of Basel (1565-8), and then the University of Heidelberg where he arrived in the Summer of 1568. While in Heidelberg he was in contact with Thomas Erastus and Johann Sylvan. His assistance to Sylvan, including acting as a courier and transcribing manuscripts led to his arrest and imprisonment in 1570 on suspicion of complicity. As it was judged that he was acting in ignorance, he was recalled to Bern, where he presented a written confession and received a caution. Sylvan was later executed for heresy.
Hasler continued his studies in Lausanne and Leipzig, where he matriculated in 1571. During his time in Leipzig, there were reports that he had travelled to Poland with a group of students. This led to suspicion that he was planning to defect to Transylvania where a number of radicals were based. However he returned to Leipzig, and then declared his intention of changing from theology to medicine. He transferred to the University of Strasbourg in the summer of 1574. While in Strasbourg, Hasler produced his first published work Aphorismi Thetici Aristotelei, a thesis which attempted a synthesis between philosophy and theology, reason and revelation. Although he received his degree shortly afterward, doubts were expressed about the theological views expressed in the work. Hasler responded in writing defending his work, which resulted in him being interrogated in prison, in August 1575, though part of his offence was publishing the work without the permission of the censor. Hasler agreed to retract any suggestion that scriptures were not the sole source of revelation and was released from prison. After this he was required to return to Bern.
During the next few years he spent time in Freiburg, where he received his medical doctorate, Lithuania as a family tutor, and Augsburg, where his two next important works De Logistica Medica, and Tabula aphoristica were published in 1578. In 1582 he returned to Bern, where he was appointed municipal doctor (Stadtarzt). Although holding a medical degree, he seems to have had little experience in practical medicine, and he transferred to a position in the University. He married in Bern, and had at least four children between 1583–1590. During this period he produced several works on practical astrology. He left Bern in 1593, after a conflict within the University, probably returning to Lithuania. The circumstances and date of his death are unknown. [1]
Hasler could clearly be a difficult and disputatious man. A letter from Thomas Erastus in 1574 notes that "his arrogance and ambition gave grounds for concern" and that he was "capable of defending whichever side of an argument pleased him". [2] But although he came under suspicion on several occasions, there was never sufficient evidence of serious deviations from the orthodoxy of the Lutheran establishment in Bern, and he generally retained the support of the city fathers, who had sponsored his studies.
The most important dispute was over the Aphorismi in 1574–1575, which dealt with arguments for natural knowledge of God (including the doctrine of the Trinity) based on Aristotle's Metaphysics. He argued that "Aristotle's comments on the eternity of the world were really a deduction from the idea of the Prime Mover as eternal causality. On this basis it was possible to outline the attributes of God, all of which could be derived from the simple and undivided nature of the divine essence." [3] He was criticised for claiming that philosophy should be used to moderate religion, which implied that the divine revelation in the scriptures was not a sufficient basis for theology. This could be seen as an attack on the authority of the church, and he was forced to recant. His decision to change his field to medicine pre-dated this dispute, but it led him into generally safer territory.
Galen's theory of medicine used the idea of the four humours (earth, air, fire, and water) characterised by four qualities (moist, dry, warm, cold), linked as earth: dry, cold; air: moist, warm; fire: dry, warm; water: moist, cold. Hasler followed Galen in considering temperament (cf temperature) as an important characteristic of both persons and medicines. Galen had experimented with mixing boiling water and ice to establish a "neutral" temperature, and posited four degrees of cold and four degrees of warmth on either side of this neutral zero point. This formulation still envisaged warm and cold as distinct, opposed entities. Hasler saw that the nine points of Galen's model could be united into a single scale from 1 (coldest) to 9 (hottest).
A thermometer with a 1–9 scale was described in 1624. [4]
He also aligned his 1–9 temperature scale with latitude, with one end of the scale corresponding to the hot equator, the other end to the cold arctic, as shown in the reproduction on the right. [5] The diagram shows that a similar scaling applies to humidity. It appears that Hasler envisaged the underlying scales as continuous - this is implied both by the mapping to latitude, and by the presentation of more detailed, sub-divided versions of the scales.
Hasler's works also included comprehensive catalogues of medical substances categorised according to their properties of temperature and humidity, and astrological calendars.
A thermometer is a device that measures temperature or a temperature gradient. A thermometer has two important elements: (1) a temperature sensor in which some change occurs with a change in temperature; and (2) some means of converting this change into a numerical value. Thermometers are widely used in technology and industry to monitor processes, in meteorology, in medicine, and in scientific research.
Johann Maier von Eck, often anglicized as John Eck, was a German Catholic theologian, scholastic, prelate, and a pioneer of the counter-reformation who was among Martin Luther's most important interlocutors and theological opponents.
The Heidelberg Catechism (1563), one of the Three Forms of Unity, is a Protestant confessional document taking the form of a series of questions and answers, for use in teaching Calvinist Christian doctrine. It was published in 1563 in Heidelberg, Germany. Its original title translates to Catechism, or Christian Instruction, according to the Usages of the Churches and Schools of the Electoral Palatinate. Commissioned by the prince-elector of the Electoral Palatinate, it is sometimes referred to as the "Palatinate Catechism." It has been translated into many languages and is regarded as one of the most influential of the Reformed catechisms.
Thomas Erastus was a Swiss physician and Calvinist theologian. He wrote 100 theses in which he argued that the sins committed by Christians should be punished by the State, and that the Church should not withhold sacraments as a form of punishment. They were published in 1589, after his death, with the title Explicatio gravissimae quaestionis. His name was later applied to Erastianism.
Johann Jakob Grynaeus or Gryner was a Swiss Protestant divine.
Frederick III of Simmern, the Pious, Elector Palatine of the Rhine was a ruler from the house of Wittelsbach, branch Palatinate-Simmern-Sponheim. He was a son of John II of Simmern and inherited the Palatinate from the childless Elector Otto-Henry, Elector Palatine (Ottheinrich) in 1559. He was a devout convert to Calvinism, and made the Reformed confession the official religion of his domain by overseeing the composition and promulgation of the Heidelberg Catechism. His support of Calvinism gave the German Reformed movement a foothold within the Holy Roman Empire.
A medical thermometer is a device which is used for measuring human or animal body temperature. The tip of the thermometer is inserted into the mouth under the tongue, under the armpit, into the rectum via the anus, into the ear, or on the forehead.
A thermoscope is a device that shows changes in temperature. A typical design is a tube in which a liquid rises and falls as the temperature changes. The modern thermometer gradually evolved from it with the addition of a scale in the early 17th century and standardisation throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
Johannes Piscator was a German Reformed theologian, known as a Bible translator and textbook writer.
CorneliusGemma was a Flemish physician, astronomer and astrologer, and the oldest son of cartographer and instrument-maker Gemma Frisius. He was a professor of medicine at the Catholic University of Leuven, and shared in his father's efforts to restore ancient Ptolemaic practice to astrology, drawing on the Tetrabiblos.
Matthias Vehe known as Glirius (c.1545-1590) was a German Protestant religious radical, who converted to a form of Judaism and anti-trinitarianism, rejecting the New Testament as revelation.
Peter Monau was a court physician of Emperor Rudolph II.
Pierre Boquin was a French Reformed Theologian who played a critical role in the Reformation of the Electoral Palatinate.
Johann Sylvan was a Reformed German theologian who was executed for his heretical Antitrinitarian beliefs.
Justus Velsius, Haganus, or Joost Welsens in Dutch, was a Dutch humanist, physician, and mathematician.
Johann Winter von Andernach was a German Renaissance physician, university professor, humanist, translator of ancient, mostly medical works, and writer of his own medical, philological and humanities works.
Adam Neuser was a Protestant pastor of Heidelberg who held Antitrinitarian views.
The Bibliotheca dissidentium is a series of 26 volumes (1980–2008) of historical editions of 16th century Non-Conformist religious works, largely in Latin, with scholarly introductions, essays and notations in French, German and/or English published by the Groupe de Recherches sur les Non-Conformismes du XVIe Siècle et l'Histoire des Protestantismes under the general editor, professor André Séguenny of the University of Strasbourg as part of the larger series Bibliotheca bibliographica Aureliana.
Michael Toxites, born Johann Michael Schütz was a doctor, alchemist and poet of the Holy Roman Empire.
Nicolaus Reusner was a German jurist and publisher. He was born into a family of wealthy German landowners in Löwenberg, Silesia, who had recently moved there from Transylvania. Several members of his family became famous in the fields of law and medicine in the 16th century, including his brothers Bartholomäus von Reusner, Elias Reusner and Jeremias von Reusner (law). Reusner studied in Wittenberg and Leipzig, under Modestinus Pistoris, and Leonhard Badehorn. In Leipzig, imperial personal physician Georg Wirth (1524–1613) persuaded him to abandon medicine and study law.