The world is a very beautiful Nothing

This sentence, in Latin, was written by a young doctor, a graduate of the University of Padua in 1649. Soon after, Johan Scheffler, later better known as the poet and mystic named Angelis Silesius, journeyed from his birthplace, the town of Breslau in Germany, to an inland town called Oels. There he was taken in as a doctor in the castle of Hertog Sylvius Nimrod.

As he made that 30-kilometer journey, the young