Kaspar Alexius

Kaspar Alexius (* 1581 in Chamues-ch ; † 1626 in Geneva ) was a Swiss Reformed pastor and theologian .

Life

Kaspar Alexius was born in 1581 in Chamues-ch in the Gotteshausbund , a part of today's Graubünden in Switzerland. After 1595 he attended the Nikolaischule in Zurich . From 1596 to 1598 he studied at the University of Zurich and after 1599 at the University of Basel . In 1603 he completed his studies there with a philosophical and a theological disputation .

Because he could not make up his mind to work as a pastor in the area of ​​the Three Leagues , he spent the years 1605 and 1606 as a student in Paris and the following years at the Calvinist Academy in Geneva. 1608 he became pastor in the town of Conches in Geneva and 1609 in Geneva ordained . In 1612 Kaspar Alexius became pastor of an Italian parish in Geneva.

After he had received several requests from all over Graubünden to accept a pastor's position, in 1616 he accepted a position as a Reformed pastor in Sondrio in Valtellina , which was dominated by the Grisons and was predominantly Catholic. He was one of the so-called « predicants » who defended the reformed minority communities against the Counter-Reformation in the predominantly Catholic Graubünden subject areas and in 1618 achieved the execution of the Catholic archpriest Nicolò Rusca von Sondrio at the criminal court of Thusis . During the Veltliner murder , in which many Protestants perished, Alexius fled in 1620 over the Murettopass into the Engadine. In the same year he took over the Untervaz community in the Chur Rhine Valley .

He was commissioned by the reformed parishes of Zizers and Untervaz to travel to the German Union , the Netherlands and the King of England to campaign for the reformed cause in Graubünden. On September 24, 1620, however, he was arrested in Breisach on behalf of Archduke Leopold V of Austria-Tyrol together with Johann von Porta and transferred to prison in Innsbruck . After the Chur bishop and the cathedral chapter stood up for them, they were released in November 1622 after being imprisoned for 26 months. Blasius Alexander , who was also arrested , was executed in December 1622. In 1623 Alexius became professor of philosophy at the Geneva Academy . He died in Geneva in 1626.

Works

• De humana anima (Basel 1602)
• An Ulysses insaniam simulans, ne ad Toianum bellum cogeretur, salem seminans, et variis animalibus aratra boys, prudentis nomen mereatur, an non? (Basel 1603)
• Dissertatio physica de mixtura (Geneve 1625)

literature

• Erich Wenneker :  Alexius, Kaspar. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 15, Bautz, Herzberg 1999, ISBN 3-88309-077-8 , Sp. 12-15.