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Henry of Langenstein

Henry of Langenstein
Born c. 1325
Hainbuch near Langenstein
Died 11 February 1397(1397-02-11)
Vienna
Nationality German
Fields Astronomy
Alma mater Université de Paris
Doctoral students Johannes von Gmunden
Influences Nicole Oresme

Henry of Langenstein, also known as Henry of Hesse the Elder (c. 1325 – 11 February 1397), was a German Scholastic philosopher, theologian and mathematician.

Henry was born at Hainbuch (Hembuche), near Langenstein in Hesse. He studied at the University of Paris, where he finished a Magister Artium in 1363, and became professor of philosophy this same year. He finished a Theology Doctor degree in 1375 and then became a professor of theology as well.

In 1368, on the occasion of the appearance of a comet, which the astrologers of his times claimed to be a sure foreboding of certain future events, he wrote a treatise entitled Quæstio de cometa, in which he refutes the then prevalent astrological beliefs. At the instance of the university he wrote three other treatises on the same subject, completed in 1373.

On his scientific work, A. C. Crombie writes

When the Western Schism broke out in 1378, Henry sided with Urban VI against Clement VII, and wrote various treatises in defence of the former. In 1379 he composed "Epistola pacis" (see Helmstädter Program, 1779 and 1780) in which, under the form of a disputation between an Urbanist and a Clementine, he advocates the suppression of the schism by way of a general council or a compromise. In his Epistola concilii pacis, composed in 1381, and based on a similar work, the Epistola Concordiæ of Conrad of Gelnhausen, he urges still more strongly the necessity of a general council and severely criticises the many abuses that were permitted to go on within the Church.

These two treatises of Henry, and the Epistola Concordiæ of Conrad, formed the basis of a discourse delivered by Cardinal Pietro Philargi, the future Alexander V, at the first session of the Council of Pisa (26 March 1409; see Bliemetzrieder in Historisches Jahrbuch (Munich, 1904), XXV, 536-541). Henry's Epistola concilii pacis is printed in von der Hardt's Concilium Constantiense, II, 1, 3-60, with the exception of the first and the second chapter, which were afterwards published by the same author in Discrepantia mss. et editionum (Helmstadt, 1715), 9-11.


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