Neue Daten zur Biographie des Klausenburger Arztes Thomas Jordanus (1540–1586)

Abstract

Thomas Jordanus von Klausenburg has been one of the most famous physicians and scholars of Transylvanian origin in the 16th Century. He was the first elected Protomedicus of Moravia in Brunn/Brno (today Czech Republic). New sources are able to supplement his biography with previously unknown details like birthday, deathday, parents’ names, brothers and sisters due to detailed philological investigations (by experts from Vienna, Regensburg and Hermannstadt/Sibiu) of his father’s records, in the family’s Lutheran New Testament (Strasbourg, 1525). The manuscript also provides new data about the writer’s dialect and origin (Southern Germany) as well as about the city council elections of 1535 in Klausenburg (Cluj-Napoca). The paper also deals with Thomas Jordanus’ medical doctor degree at Valence (France) which was given to him 1562, together with his fellow student Leonhard Rauwolf and another fellow student, Johann Bauhin, later both renowned botanists.