Johannes Heinrich Ursinus


Johannes Heinrich Ursinus was a learned German author, scholar, Lutheran theologian, humanist and dean of Regensburg.
Ursinus studied the Oriental roots of western philosophy and was the author of a scholastic encyclopaedia. He was a Rector in Mainz, preached in Weingarten, Speier and Regensburg, and had been a student in Straßburg.
His Arboretum Biblicum, which appeared in 1663, was the first attempt of note to create a concordance of botanical references in the Bible, and predated the Hierozoicon, a zoological compendium of biblical animals, of Samuel Bochart. In all Ursinus published 137 works in 153 publications in 3 languages.
The plant genus Ursinia was named after Ursinus by the German botanist, Joseph Gaertner.

Selected works