HEYNLIN, JOHANNES VON STEIN (Johannes de Lapide). – Carthusian theologian and scholar, born at Stein in Baden between 1430 and 1433, died at Basel on 12 March 1496. He first taught philosophy and then theology at Paris (1455–1465), Basel (1465–67), and again Paris (1467–1472). In 1474 he returned to Basel as a preacher, and in 1478 went to Tübingen as co-founder and professor of the new University; the following year he definitively gave up university teaching in order to devote himself to the sacred ministry. A famous preacher, he carried out his activity first at Baden-Baden and Bern, and from 1484 onward at Basel. His sermons are preserved in five manuscript codices in the University Library of Basel. Another fruit of these years of ministry, namely a short treatise on the Holy Mass, written for rural parish priests (Resolutorium dubiorum circa celebrationem Missarum occurrentium), enjoyed extraordinary circulation, being reprinted in 42 editions. In 1487 H. entered the Carthusian monastery of Basel.
H.’s place in the history of thought lies between scholasticism and humanism. As a philosopher, he is still the typical medieval thinker, representative of a moderate realism (he did not adhere, as was once believed, to ultrarealism); as a scholar, he is considered one of the precursors of German humanism. Rodolfo Agricola and Giovanni Reuchlin were his pupils in Paris, and H. himself is the author of several humanistic writings now forgotten. More important than his own literary activity are the editions of classical authors and the Fathers that he prepared. H. also deserves credit for introducing the art of printing to Paris by calling several German printers from Mainz. The first incunabula printed in Paris were prepared by him, and even during the last years of his life he was an adviser and collaborator of the publisher Giovanni Amerbach in Basel, formerly his pupil in Paris.