Classical Authors and Pneumatological Questions. Greek Dissertations Supervised by Johannes Gezelius the Elder at the University of Tartu (Academia Gustaviana 1644–1647)

Johannes Gezelius the Elder supervised at least ten Greek dissertations in 1644-50, the last one at the Stockholm gymnasium, others at the University of Tartu. This paper focuses especially on the Greek dissertations dealing with a branch of theology called pneumatology and the references to the classical Greek and Latin authors in them. There are seven extant dissertations of this series (Nos. 1-6 and No. 9). However, it seems that there had been plans to published the tenth dissertation on the subject "Life in Hell" in this series. References to the classical authors are not as numerous as in the Greek dissertations supervised by Henricus Ausius in Uppsala in 1648-1656. Although references are often quite vague, like mentioning Homer as one of the pagan authors in favour of the immortality of human soul, there are some direct quotations, too, like from Aristotle's On Heavens and Xenophon's Memorabilia (in the first dissertation of the series). However, it turned out that nearly all classical references, which are mentioned in extant Greek dissertations supervised by Gezelius, are to be found in Johann Alsted's Encyclopedia (1630) which is even referred to in the fifth dissertation of the series (Gezelius - Jheringius 1646, Thesis 25). It will be the task of further study to find out whether these Greek dissertations are modified translations into Greek of Alsted's presentation of pneumatology in his Encyclopaedia.