Beumler, Mark

, a learned minister of the reformed church, was born in 1555, at Volketswyl, a village in the canton of Zurich, and died of the plague at Zurich, in 1611. He studied at Geneva and Heidelberg, and after having exercised the ministerial functions in Germany for some years, returned to Zurich in 1594, where he was appointed professor of theology. He published many theological, philological, and philosophical works, which are now forgot, but some of them were highly esteemed in his day, particularly his “Grammar,” Zurich, 1593, and his “Rhetoric,” ibid. 1629, which were often reprinted. He also translated and wrote notes on some of Cicero’s, Demosthenes, and Plutarch’s works, and was the author of a “Catechism” which was long the only one used at Zurich. He was accounted one of the ablest defenders of Zuinglius and Calvin. The style of his polemical works partook of that quaintness which prevailed in controversial writing for more than a century after his time. The title of one of his pamphlets will exemplify this, and amuse our Latin readers “Falco emissus ad capiendum, deplumandum et dilacerandum audaciorem ilium cuculum ubjquitarium, qui nuper ex Jac. Andreae, mali corvi, male ovo, ab Holdero simplicissima curruca exclusus, eta demoniaco Bavio Fescenio varii coloris plumis instructus, impetum in philomelas innocentes facere ceperat,” Neustadt, 1585, 4to. ²