Andrzej Wiszowaty
Andrzej Wiszowaty Andreas Wissowatius (* November 26, 1608 in Filipów; † July 29, 1678 in Amsterdam) is one of the most influential Polish Unitarians, philosopher and theologian. He is a grandson of the founder of Socinianism in Poland, Fausto Sozzini, and author of the much-cited work religio rationalis, which he was the founder of religiously based rationalism.
Life and work
Wissowatius Andreas ' mother, Agnieszka ( Agnes ) Wiszowaty, was the only daughter of Faustus Sozzini. His father Stanislaw Wiszowaty belonged to the low Polish nobility. Andreas Wissowatius arrived in the small town Filipów in the Voivodeship of Traken ( Trakai ) to the world. His parents moved soon after his birth in south-western Poland near Krakow. In his early school years he went to Raciborsk near Jankówka to school. Because of its apparent great talent he has already sent the age of eleven on the sozinianische Academy in the Socinian place Raków, where he was a student of Martin Ruarus and the Nuremberg John Krell, who was at that time (1616-1621) Rector of the Academy Rakauer. Wissotatius left the Academy in 1629, and he was able to make many international contacts through his participation in the Synod of the Polish brothers, he undertook from then on extended trips to Germany, Holland, Belgium, France and England. From June 1632 he studied for several years in the Dutch Leyden theology and philosophy. In Paris Wissowatius Marin Mersenne, Pierre Gassendi and multiple Hugo Grotius has taken. Wissowatius to have been through Flanders and the Polish companion René Descartes on the hike. On the return trip to Poland Andreas Wissowatius has been in 1642 in Hamburg with Joachim Jungius who highly valued as friends.
Since 1643 he was a Unitarian clergyman in the Ukraine, Volhynia and in Lesser Poland. After initiated by the Counter-Reformation in 1658 relentless expulsion of all Unitarians from Poland Wissowatius went into the Habsburg Silesia and from 1660 to 1662 to the Unitarian friends to Transylvania. From 1663 he held himself together with other Unitarians on in Mannheim and Heidelberg. He spent his life in Amsterdam, where from 1676 to 1678, he wrote his most important work religio rationalis and where he died on July 29, 1678 at the age of 70 years.