SALAT, HANS

Swiss Catholic historian, poet, and pamphleteer; b. Sursee (Lucerne), 1498; d. Sursee, Oct. 20, 1561. A ropemaker and later a surgeon, he served as a French mercenary in Italy (1522–27). In 1529 he fought in the First Kappel War and gained citizenship in Lucerne. In October 1531 he became city historian. After the Second Kappel War (1531), he produced satirical poems against the Protestants. His ferocious satire against H. zwingli, Triumphus Herculis helvetici (1532), compared the Reformation to a witches' Sabbath. Meanwhile he was writing his Chronicka und Beschrybung von Anfang des nüwen Ungloubens (1536). This highly partisan work, which regards the Reformation as divine punishment, covers the period 1517 to 1534. Salat wrote also military histories, political pamphlets, and at least one drama. Personal and political causes drove him from Lucerne in 1540. He soldiered again, taught school at Fribourg until dismissed (1547), and spent his final years as a surgeon. In 1552 he returned to Sursee.

Bibliography: h. salat, Chronicka, in Archiv für die schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte, 3 v. (Freiburg 1869–75) 1:1–396; "Memorial der Regierung von Unterwalden über den bewaffneten Zug der Abwaldner in das Haslithal wider die Berner und über die daherigen Verhandlungen und Folgen von Anno 1527 bis Anno 1531," ibid., 2:99–151. j. baechtold, ed., Hans Salat: Ein schweizerischer Chronist und Dichter aus der ersten Hälfte desXVI. Jahrhunderts: Sein Leben und seine Schriften (Basel 1876). e. f. j. mÜller, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. m. buchberger, 10 v. (Freiburg 1930–38) 9:110–111.

[c. g. nauert jr.]