HEYNLIN, Johannes von Stein (Johannes de Lapide). - Carthusian theologian and scholar, b. at Stein in Baden between 1430 and 1433, d. at Basel on 12 March 1496. He taught first philosophy and then theology in Paris (1455-1465), in Basel (1465-67) and again in Paris (1467-1472). In 1474 he returned to Basel as a preacher, and in 1478 he went to Tübingen as co-founder and professor of the new University; the following year he renounced university teaching definitively in order to devote himself to the sacred ministry. A famous preacher, he carried on his activity first at Baden-Baden and Bern, and from 1484 onward at Basel. His sermons are preserved in 5 manuscript codices in the University Library of Basel. Another fruit of these years of ministry, namely a small treatise on Holy Mass, written for country parish priests (Resolutorium dubiorum circa celebrationem Missarum occurrentium), had an extraordinary circulation, reprinted in 42 editions. In 1487 H. entered the Carthusian monastery of Basel.
H.'s place in the history of thought is between Scholasticism and Humanism. As a philosopher he is still the typical medieval thinker, a representative of moderate realism (he did not adhere, as was once believed, to ultra-realism); as a scholar he is considered one of the precursors of German Humanism. Rudolf Agricola and Johannes Reuchlin were his disciples in Paris, and H. himself is the author of several humanistic writings now forgotten. More important than his own literary activity are the editions he edited of classical authors and of the Fathers. H. also has the merit of having introduced the art of printing into Paris by summoning some German printers from Mainz. The first incunabula printed in Paris were edited by him, and still in the last years of his life he was adviser and collaborator of the publisher Johannes Amerbach in Basel, once his disciple in Paris.
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Anneliese Maier