[Angelus Silesius--physician and mystic]

The priest as physician of the soul and the doctor as physician of the body, this ancient model of christian mentality was adapted by Johannes Scheffler-better known under his pseudonym Angelus Silesius-both in his biography and his literary works. Born 1624 in Breslau, he graduated to a Doctor philosophiae et medicinae and became physician in ordinary to an orthodox-Lutheran earl. Contacts to the esoteric Christianity, which was based on theosophy, mysticism and the physics of Johann Böhme, let Scheffler quit his profession. He converted to Catholicism in 1653 and was ordained as a catholic priest in 1661. His two main manuscripts, the Cherubinische Wandersmann and the Heilige Seelenlust, a poetical dyptichon, show the two possibilities of reaching the mystical recognition of god, either the capability of reason or the ability of emotion. The centre of all is the unio mystica, the union with god. Its a mysticism of the spontaneity of salvation, which occurs in a variety of prospects, metaphors and paradoxical language.