Althusen, John

, a German Protestant lawyer, was born about the middle of the sixteenth century, and became law-professor p.t Herborn, and syndic at Bremen. He wrote some treatises in the way of his profession, “De Jurisprudentia Romana,” and “De civili conversatione;” but what made him principally known, was his “Politica methodice digesta,” 1603, in, which he maintained the sovereignty of the people, and their right to put kings to death, and those other doctrines, the effects of which were so extensively displayed in England in the seventeenth, and in France in the eighteenth century. A recent French biographer, Michaud, observes that “these strange opinions produced by the revolutionary spirit which prevailed in the sixteenth century, have been revived in ours by the demagogues, who fancy that they are advancing something new.” Althusen died in the early part of the seventeenth century. ²