Caspar Peucer



Caspar Peucer (6 January 1525-25 September 1602) was a German reformer, physician, and scholar.

Born in Bautzen, Peucer studied mathematics, astronomy, and medicine at the University of Wittenberg since 1540. In 1543, he became a lodger in the house of one of the most famous professors in Wittenberg, the theologian and humanist Philipp Melanchthon, whose daughter Magdalena he married in 1550. In 1554, he became professor of mathematics at Wittenberg, and in 1560 professor of medicine, leading the Wittenberg faculty in that field. Until 1574, he also served several times as dean and rector. In spite of his medical profession--in 1570, he became even personal physician to the Elector of Saxony--he was, after the death of Melanchthon, one of the leading Protestants in Saxony.

However, in 1574 Peucer was officially charged with Crypto-Calvinism in an inter-Lutheran fight for power and put in jail in the famed Königstein Fortress for twelve years. Released in 1586, he went to the Duchy of Anhalt, where he became Councillor and personal physician of the Prince of Anhalt. He died in the capital of Dessau in 1602.

Works (incomplete)

 * Tractatus historicus de Ph.Melanchthonis sententia de controversia coenae Domini, 1553 (printed 1596)
 * Commentarius de praecipuis divinationum generibus, 1553
 * Corpus Doctrinae Philippicum, 1560
 * Opera Melan, 1562-65
 * Epistolae, 1565
 * Idyllion de Lusatia, 1583 (printed 1594)

Caspar Peucer