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almanacs, the use of which has been preserved to a com- paratively recent period, being described by Dr. Plot in liis f/istory of Staffordshire (1686) as still in common use in that county ; some, of large size, being usually hung up at one side of the mantel-tree of the chimney, while others were smaller and carried in the pocket. Other examples of the use of notched or marked sticks for the purpose of records are the Reiiie Pole, still or lately used in the island of Portland for collecting the yearly rent paid to the sovereign as lord of the manse, and the Exchequer Tally, which still gives name to the office of certain functionaries in England known as the " tellers" {falliers) of the exchequer. — Kitto, Pict. Bible, note ad loc. See Rod ; Staff ; Walk.
Stiefel (or Stieffel), Esaias, the head of a mys- tical sect which engaged much attention at the begin- ning of the 17th century, has already been partly treat- ed of in this Cyclojicedia in the art. Mkth, Ezechiel (q. v.). He was a merchant of Langensalza, in Thurin- gia, who was led away, through self-conceit and a fond- ness for curious speculations, into a fanatical mj^sticism which, in connection with Meth, his nephew, he endeav- ored to propagate. His followers soon became numer- ous among his own kindred and towns-people, and then in wider circles. He was repeatedly' cited before tribu- nals, and remonstrated with in the hope of a peaceful settlement of the troubles he occasioned; and he fre- quently renounced his errors, but as constantly return- ed to them again. He eventually died in the faith, however, at Erfurt, Aug. 12, 1627. About a century later his memory was revived by Christian Thomasius, in the third part of his Hist, der IVei'iheit u. Thorheit (1694), and by Gottfried Arnold, in his Kirchen- ti. Ketzer-IIisto- rie (1700), iv, 1-49. Tlie over-tolerant spirit in which these authors had discussed Stiefel's heterodoxy occa- sioned a critique of Arnold's book by pastor Uthe, of Lan- gensalza {^Aninei'kung iiber Arnold's Erzdhlimij [1714]). Stiefel has, however, been almost entirely dropped out of sight by the literature of to-day. The mysticism of Stiefel was carried beyond all proper limits by his fond- ness for paradox; and his worst errors of statement grew out of his perversions of ordinary language. He called himself Christ, and declared himself to be Christ revealed anew, without intending to positively identity himself with Christ. He also laid claim to the posses- sion of divine attributes, for which he was rebuked by no less a personage than .Jacob Biihme ( see Widlen, Bliitlmi aus J.BOhme's Mystik [Stuttg.and Tub. 1«38], p. 31, 89 ; also Kernhufter A uszug (ins alien Schriflen ./. Buhim's [Amst. 1718, 4to], p. 923 sq.) ; though upon
other matters Rdhme sympathized with Stiefel and excused iiis enthusiastic rantings (see Apolug. Stieff.). Comi)., in addition to works already referred to, the ac- cusation against Stiefel (;\\tn\ci\ Abyssus-Hatano Styffe- liana, and Herzog, Real-Encyklop. s. v.
Stiefel (also Stifel, Stieffel, and Styfel), Mi- chael, an arithmetician, Jlillenarian, and coadjutor of Luther, was born April 19, 1486, at Esslingen, and be- came a monk in the Augustine convent of that town. In 1520 he went to Wittenberg, and was promoted to the degree of master and made ()reacher to count Mans- feld. While there he composed a hymn which reveals his intimate sympathy with the Reformatory spirit (Wackernagel, Das deutsche Kirchenlied, p. 676 scj.). In June, 1525, Luther recommended him to Ge()rge of Tol- leth, in U|)per Austria, as a " pious, learned, well-be- haved, and industrious person" (De Wette, Briefe, ii, 677). A fine treatment of Psalm x by him excited a persecution against the evangelicals; and Stiefel was obliged to leave Austria in 1526 or 1527 and return to Wittenberg. Luther thereupon procured for him the parish of Lochau (October, 1528), and married him to the widow of the late pastor (De Wette, ut sup. p. 394, 405). Soon afterwards (in 1532) Stiefel published a treatise on the numbers in Daniel, entitled Ein Kecheii- hiichlein voni End Christi, in which he fixed the last day and hour to be Oct. 19, 1533, at 8 o'clock in the morn- ing (see De Wette, iv, 462), with the result that the peasants neglected their labors and lost their harvests, but sued for damages when the prediction was not ful- filled. Stiefel was accordingly compelled to abandon his post; but received assistance in money, etc., from the elector, who also induced Luther to receive the mis- guided man, with his family, under his own roof for the purpose of imparting to him further instruction. In 1535 Stiefel was again a pastor, probably at Holtzeiidorff, near Wittenberg; and while there he published his Arithmetica Integra, with preface by Melancthon (Corj), Ref. V, 6). In 1545 he issued an arithmetic in German; in 1546, the Rechenbuch von der welschen v. deutschen Practik. The battle of Mlihlbach involved the de- struction of his village ; and after a sojourn at Frank- fort-on-the-Oder he settled in the pastorate at Haber- stro, near Ktinigsberg, Prussia, in 1552. In 1553 he published the Cours (algebra) Christoph Rudolph's. He was also steadily engaged on the computation of the numbers in Daniel and the Apocalypse, and became the zealous opponent of Andreas Osiander. Soon afterwards he was pastor at Rrtick, and in that character attended the convention of Coswig in 1557 (Salig, Gesch. d. A ugsb. Conf. iii, 242); and in 1558 he was received into the philosophical faculty at Jena as teacher of arithmetic, a position he had temporarily tilled ten years earlier. Here he was assailed by the Flacianists, but prevailed against them. He died, after having been made deacon of the town Churcli, April 19, 1567. The scanty infor- mation to be obtained respecting this remarkable, and in many respects pecuhar, theologian shows him to have been possessed of a lively fancy and of extraordinary ability in mathematics. It was because of these (jualifi- cations that he went astray on the chiliastic question. He apprehended the IJilile jioetically, and believed that his mathematical acquirements afforded the means for an exact com])utation of its numbers. It is to be observed, moreover, that he was no pessimist. He regarded the Reformation as being simply the beautiful dawning of the day of the Lord, the breaking of a day of salvation, and Luther as the angel of revelation with the everlast- ing (iospel (Rev. xiv) ; and he wrote against " Dr. Mur- ner's false and invented hyuni respecting the destruc- tion of the Christian faith." Competent judges regard Stiefel as one of the greatest arithmeticians of his time. Unlike most scholars of that class, he regarded arithme- tic as being not simply the art of reckoning, but also the science of numbers. His ingenious comparison of arithmetical and geometrical progressions might easily have led to the discovery of the logarithm. As an al-