Researching Johannes Salat

Much of his life is documented in his diary entries, covering the years 1517 to 1550. A rope-maker by education, he may also have attended the Latin college in Sursee. He lived in Zürich during 1511 to 1519, and again in Sursee during 1519/20 before moving to Lucerne, where he lived during the 1520s and 1530s, during 1522 to 1527 intermittently participating in several military campaigns in French service in the Italian Wars as quartermaster, and in the Musso war in the service of Lucerne. He was also present in the Wars of Kappel against Protestant Zürich in 1529 and 1531.

He received Lucerne citizenship in 1529 (after the First War of Kappel), and from 1531 he worked as secretary to the Lucerne court of justice, a prestigious position earlier held by other notable Swiss chroniclers (Melchior Russ, Petermann Etterlin), and published literary works, often of a polemical and satirical nature. He also compiled historical works commissioned by the Catholic cantons of the Swiss Confederacy. He attacked the reformation in his 1531 Tanngrotz (a term for "fir-sprig", the badge of the Catholic troops). When Heinrich Bullinger reacted in a pamphlet Salz zum Salat (i.e. "salt for the salad", punning on Salat's surname), he followed up with the much more acrimonious Triumphus Herculis Helvetici which portrayed Zwingli and his Reformation as an obscene witches' sabbath. In 1537, Salat published a more conciliatory "book of warning to the Thirteen Cantons". Salat was also in charge of several dramatic performances during his time at Lucerne, the most notable of which was the Easter play at Lucerne in 1538.

He lost his employment in Lucerne due to fraud in 1540 and worked in Fribourg as school-master during the 1540s. He does not appear to have fared well in Fribourg, repeatedly imploring the Lucerne authorities to let him return, even threatening to change his allegiance to the Protestant camp should they refuse. In 1547 he lost his post as a school-master due to the performance of a students' play that was considered lewd. From that time, he survived offering his services as a leech, alchemist and astrologist, until he was allowed to return to Sursee in 1552 after which there are no more records of him. He was dead by October 1561.