The reception of Paracelsianism in early modern Lutheran Denmark: from Peter Severinus, the Dane, to Ole Worm.

Retrospectively, the appointment in 1571 of the two Paracelsian physicians, Peter Severinus (1540-1602) and Johannes Philip Pratensis (1543-1576), as royal physician to King Frederik II of Denmark-Norway and professor of medicine at the University of Copenhagen respectively, can be seen to have marked not only the introduction of Paracelsianism, but also the start of the medical renaissance in Denmark. The importance of Peter Severinus and his work Idea medicina philosophica? (Basle, 1571) in making Paracelsus's ideas acceptable within the scholarly community of early modem Europe was widely recognized by contemporary admirers, as well as antagonists. Since contemporaries labelled Paracelsus the Luther of medicine, it is tempting to widen the analogy and see Severinus as Melanchthon to Paracelsus's Luther. Like Melanchthon, Severinus eased and modified his mentor's ideas, thereby making them acceptable within the political and scholarly world where hitherto they had lacked appeal. Thus, the Heidelberg-based physician and theologian Thomas Erastus recommended Severinus's book as the most palatable face of Paracelsianism as early as 1579,' while another influential critic, the Wittenberg professor of medicine, Daniel Sennert, in his book, De chymicorum cum Aristotelicis et Galenicis consensu ac dissensu, published in Wittenberg in 1619, stated: