Vita clarissimi viri D. Iosiae Simleri Tigurini, S. Theologiae in Schola Tigurina Professoris fidelissimi

which is a response to the Bavarian articles, of which Bullinger is the author. Also Bullinger’s compendium of the Christian religion. Also his exhortation to all ministers of the church to cultivate mutual concord and to teach faithfully faith in Christ and true repentance. Also his booklet concerning the persecutions which the Church has suffered, their causes, and the horrible punishments of the persecutors. Finally, the paraphrastic interpretation of the Lord's Prayer, the Apostolic Creed, etc., by Otho Vuerdmüller, a former most faithful pastor of our church, and a distinguished theologian and philosopher. And these indeed are the theological lucubrations of our Simler which exist, to which, if a longer life had been granted him, a great addition would undoubtedly have been made in a short time. For among other things, he had it in mind to illustrate the monuments of Saint Hilary with Scholies, to correct many corrupt passages—both from the copy of Joachim Vadian, of which he had an abundance from the library of Saint Gall, and from the sharpness of his own talent, in which he excelled greatly—and finally to explain certain obscure and harsh sayings of the same, which are variably and nefariously twisted by heretics to establish their errors. But an immature death made this famous endeavor of his, like many others, void. He was, however, very skilled not only in Theology, but also in the remaining arts which act as if they were handmaidens and servants to Theology. He had an excellent knowledge of Mathematics, which are as the soil and foundation of all remaining disciplines and have a great kinship with Theology. "Who is ignorant," says Cicero, "that those who are called mathematicians are involved in such obscurity of things, and in an art so recondite, multiple, and subtle?" So he says. Our Simler knew these arts so well that there is nothing in them so abstruse and recondite that he appears not to have known it. And thus, from this also, the incredible and admirable power and sharpness of his talent shone forth even more, in that he learned these very arts—obstructed by so many and so great difficulties and obscurities (which are commonly said to be called mathemata or matheseis in Greek, because they cannot be perceived without a teacher)—as if he were αὐτοδίδακτος self-taught, by his own, if I may so speak, Mars. For he heard a few things in Astronomy at Basel from Acronius, and in Geometry at Strasbourg from Herlinus—who was indeed a most skilled mathematician but not assiduous in the task of teaching, perhaps because he had few listeners—and in Arithmetic at the same place from a certain typographical workman who was an idiot and illiterate. And so, just as they say that Didymus the Alexandrian, though deprived of sight, learned Dialectic and Geo-