Synopsis of Events from the Creation of the World

...called to the son, he said the case was hopeless, and that no means of recovery remained. Who could express the grief this response caused everyone? Yet, surely, if we listen to Seneca Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65), a Roman Stoic philosopher. His works were frequently quoted by 17th-century scholars like Besold., he says: "We must hold our friends as if we were about to lose them, and lose them as if we still held them" original: "Oportet, vt Amicos habeamus tanquam amissuri; amittamus, tanquam habeamus.".

September 12th.

On Sunday, the requested doctor arrived. He kept our minds in a state of distressing doubt with his vague and ambiguous original: "amphibologicis", meaning double-worded or open to multiple interpretations. answers about the patient’s health. He explicitly offered no hope, yet he wished to keep fear at bay even more. Nevertheless, he revealed to the Reverend Father Bisselius Johann Bisselius (1601–1682), a Jesuit scholar and poet who recorded Besold's conversion and final days., who was visiting the sick man frequently, that Doctor Hoefer's Wolfgang Hoefer (1614–1681), a prominent court physician. hopeless opinion was based on significant evidence.

After administering the medicines that the desperate situation required, the doctor did not fail in his duties; he worked tirelessly for the health of such a great man—a man whom the Fates would only take from this world amidst universal sorrow. Therefore, he urgently pressed that the patient should fortify himself with the Holy Communion Synaxis: A Greek term (σύναξις) meaning "assembly," used here in a liturgical sense to refer to the reception of the Eucharist as part of the last rites.. He arranged for the Fathers of the Society The Jesuits, or the Society of Jesus, who were attending to Besold's spiritual needs following his conversion to Catholicism. to advise the patient of this, so that he himself would not have to be the one to deliver the "death sentence" to the sick man by his own word. He feared being as unwelcome to everyone with such an omen as men usually are when bringing bad...