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HOWARD HOTSON, Johann Heinrich Alsted 1588–1638: Between Renaissance,
Reformation, and Universal Reform, Oxford Historical Monographs
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), xiv + 271 pp. ISBN 0 19
820828 6. £45.00
Early modern researchers like to use the encyclopaedic work of
Johann Heinrich Alsted as a treasure trove of seventeenth-century
learning. Yet until now there has been no comprehensive monograph
on the life and work of Alsted, professor of philosophy and theology
at the reformed academy in Herborn. Specific aspects have been
investigated, such as, for example, Alsted’s role as a teacher in the
context of Gerhard Menk’s excellent study of the history of the
Herborn academy. 1 Similarly, individual texts have been studied, in
particular, the 1630 Encyclopaedia, ‘the most significant encyclopaedia
of the Baroque period’, 2 and the Diatribe de mille annis apocalypticis,
published in 1627 and translated into English in 1643, which is the
most influential seventeenth-century millenarian text, along with the
works of Thomas Brightman and Joseph Medes. Given the variety
and number of Alsted’s works (more than sixty were published, and
some are several thousand pages long), specialization is inevitable.
Howard Hotson from the University of Aberdeen, undeterred by the
amount of material, has attempted an overall assessment. The fruit of
his protracted research in archives and libraries has now been presented
in three books. In addition to the study under review here, an
edition of sources and a study of Alsted’s millenarianism have been
published, 3 and a further book on Alsted’s encyclopaedia project has
1 Gerhard Menk, Die Hohe Schule Herborn in ihrer �rühzeit (1584–1660): Ein
Beitrag zum Hochschulwesen des deutschen Kalvinismus im Zeitalter der Gegenreformation
(Wiesbaden, 1981).
2 Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Topica universalis: Eine Modellgeschichte humanistischer
und barocker Wissenschaft (Hamburg, 1983), p. 104; Schmidt-
Biggemann has also edited the Encyclopaedia as a reprint: Encyclopaedia:
�aksimile-Neudruck der Ausgabe Herborn 1630, 7 bks in 4 vols (Stuttgart-Bad
Cannstatt, 1989–90).
3 Maria Rosa Antognazza and Howard Hotson, Alsted and Leibniz on God, the
Magistrate and the Millennium (Wiesbaden, 1999); Howard Hotson, Paradise
Postponed: Johann Heinrich Alsted and the Birth of Calvinist Millenarianism,
Archives internationales d’histoire des idées, 172 (Dordrecht, 2000).
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