Josias Simmler was a Swiss theologian and classicist, author of the first book relating solely to the Alps.
Life
The son of the former prior of the Cistercian convent of Kappel, he was born at Kappel, where his father was the Protestant pastor and schoolmaster till his death in 1557. In 1544 Simmler went to Zürich to continue his education under his godfather, the reformer, Heinrich Bullinger. After having completed his studies at Basel and Strasbourg, he returned to Zürich, and became pastor to the neighboring villages. In 1552 he was made professor of New Testamentexegesis at Zurich's Carolinum academy, where he also taught mathematics and Ptolemaic astronomy, and in 1560 became professor of theology. In 1555 he published a new edition of Conrad Gessner'sEpitome of his Bibliotheca universalis, a new edition of the Bibliotheca itself, and in 1575 an annotated edition of the Antonine Itinerary. Later, he would become deacon to St Peter's, Zurich. and translated many of Bullinger's works into Latin, and write his biography. In 1559 he had his first attack of gout, a complaint which would eventually kill him.
Contributions to Swiss studies
About 1551 he conceived the idea of making his native land better known by translating into Latin parts of the great Chronik of Johann Stumpf. With this view he collected materials, and in 1574 published a specimen of his intended work in the shape of a monograph on the Canton of the Valais. He published in the same volume a general description of the Alps, as the Introduction to his projected work on the several Swiss Cantons. In this treatise, entitled De Alpibus commentarius, he collected all that the classical authors had written on the Alps, adding a good deal of material collected from his friends and correspondents. This Commentarius is the first work exclusively devoted to the Alps, and sums up the knowledge of that region possessed in the 16th century. It was re-published by the Elzevirs at Leiden in 1633, and again at Zürich in 1735, while an elaborate annotated edition, with French translation, notes and appendices, appeared at Grenoble in 1904. Another fragment of his vast plan was the work entitled De Helvetiorum republica, which appeared at Zürich in 1576, just before his death. It was regarded as the chief authority on Swiss constitutional matters up to 1798. In 1566 he wrote a biography of his friend Conrad Gessner, shortly after his death the previous year.
