The earliest sources on Martin Seidel, author of Origo et fundamenta religionis christianae

Abstract

The clandestine manuscript Origo et fundamenta religionis christianae attacks the foundations of Christianity and proposes a natural religion. Although all preserved copies date back to the 18th century, there is enough evidence pointing at the authorship of Silesian Martin Seidel, and documenting the existence of the text in the late 16th or early 17th century. The earliest sources on Seidel associate him with the Heidelberg Anti-Trinitarians (1570), the Polish Unitarians (1580) and the Socinian community at Altdorf (1610). In this paper I examine these sources and correct in light of them some assertions made by recent scholarship on Seidel and his Origo