| Summary: | "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 encyclopaedist 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." "From the mainstream Reformed tradition, Alsted and his circle inherited the zeal for further reformation of church, state, and society; but with this they blended hermetic dreams of a general reformation and of the restoration of primordial perfection to fallen human nature through Lullist and alchemical panaceas. However paradoxical from a strictly Calvinist standpoint, this loose synthesis helped prepare the programme of Alsted's greatest student, Jan Amos Comenius, and the following generation of central European universal reformers." "Alsted's intellectual biography provides an invaluable introduction to many of the central ideas, individuals, and institutions of a neglected era of central European intellectual history."--Jacket
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