Thomas Erastus dies on December 31, 1583;…

Thomas Erastus dies on December 31, 1583; the significance of his theses, which will be published posthumously in 1589 under the title Explicatio gravissimae quaestionis … , is reflected by their numerous translations: in 1659 as The Nullity of Church Censures, in 1682 as A Treatise of Excommunication, and in 1844 in a Scottish edition.

Erastus also had written several medical and scientific treatises in which he attacked such popular superstitions as the belief in astrology and in alchemical transmutation of metals.

He himself, however, shared the contemporary belief in witchcraft, which he opposed in his Repetitio disputationis de lamiis seu strigibus (1578; “Repetition of the Disputation Against Witches”), a defense of the use of the death penalty against witches and sorcerers.,

The Swiss physician and religious controversialist had been forced to leave Heidelberg following the reinstitution of Lutheranism under the elector of Palatine Louis VI (1576–83).

On his return to Basel, he had been appointed professor of medicine there in 1580 and of ethics in 1582.

The term Erastian—for Erastianism, a doctrine of church-state relationship that he himself never taught—will evidently come into use first in 1643 in England; Presbytelouirians will use it as a term of abuse for those who urge state supremacy.)