Johannes Scheffler

SCHEFFLER, Johannes (‘Angelus Silesius’). b. Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), 1624 (baptised 24 December); d. Breslau, 9 July 1677. Born into a Polish noble family, he was educated at the Elisabeth-Gymnasium in Breslau. He studied medicine at Strasbourg (1643), Leiden (1644) and Padua (1647), where he qualified as a physician. In 1649 he was appointed court physician at Öls to Duke Silvius Nimrod of Württemberg-Öls, but the intolerant Lutheranism of the court was not to his liking, and he left in 1652 for Breslau. He was given the title of Imperial Court Physician by the Emperor Ferdinand III, but this seems to have been an honorific title, and apparently he remained in Breslau. In 1653 he...