Background
He was born of poor Protestant parents near Bischofszell, in the Swiss canton of Thurgau.
He was born of poor Protestant parents near Bischofszell, in the Swiss canton of Thurgau.
He was a Calvinist writer of note. His university career, first at Ingolstadt (1595‑1596), then at Altdorf near Nuremberg (1597‑1598), was cut short by his poverty, from which he suffered all his life, and which was the main cause of his wanderings. In 1598 he found a rich protector in the person of Bartholomaeus Schobinger, of Street Gall, by whose liberality he was enabled to study at Street Gall (where he first became interested in medieval documents, which abound in the Abbey of Street Gall) and elsewhere in Switzerland.
The year before his patron"s death in 1604, he became secretary to Henri, duc de Bouillon, with whom he went to Heidelberg and Frankfurt.
But in 1604 he entered the service of the Baron von Hohensax, the possessor of the Codex Manesse, the precious manuscript volume of old German Minnesänger of which Goldast published excerpts. Soon he was back in Switzerland, and by 1606 in Frankfurt, earning his living by preparing and correcting books for the press
In 1611 he was appointed councillor at the court of Saxe-Weimar, and in 1615 he entered the service of Graf Ernst von Schaumburg at Buckeburg. In 1624 he was forced by developments in the Thirty Years War to retire to Bremen.
There in 1625 he deposited his library in that of the town, he himself returning to Frankfurt.
In 1627 he became councillor to the Emperor Ferdinand II and to the archbishop-elector of Trier, and in 1633 passed to the service of the landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt. He died at Gießen early in 1635.