Heinrich was born in 1556, raised in the household of an important Lutheran clergyman, and he was strongly influenced by his father's itinerant movements and polemical struggles with Reformed (Calvinist) churchmen and Roman Catholic opponents.
In Tonna, Heshusius had a close relationship with the counts of Gleichen and the Ernestine rulers of Electoral Saxony, and he founded a school there at the behest of a local countess.
Most of these publications sought to protect the Lutheran community from what Heshusius perceived as the inroads of confessional rivals in the region such as Calvinists, Jesuits, Anabaptists, and Jews.
[6] Heshusius also tried to expel Jesuit leaders from the city, who were forming a Latin school and reviving the historic Roman Catholic cathedral, but these efforts were also unsuccessful.
[8] For modern historians, the life and career of Heshusius has been used as a gateway to understanding the influence of relatively "ordinary" parish pastors and administrators during the late Reformation period.