Despite reports to the contrary,[3] Hippolytus Guarinonius himself later recorded that he spent the first eleven years of his life growing up in Vienna till his father relocated to Prague in 1583, still a court physician, but now working for a new emperor, Rudolf II.

By 1601, he had relocated to Hall in Tirol,[4] then an important administrative city in the Habsburg territories, some 180 km (110 miles) to the north of Trent.

He also coined the phrase, "Achtung auf die Natur und zurück zu ihr, Maßhalten in jedem!

This won him plaudits in conservative circles but also made him a controversial figure for the town council and for other fellow citizens, some of whom founds Guarinonius an unscrupulous tactician.

[4] In 1628 he was authorized by Daniel Zeno, the Bishop of Brixen, to "catechize" in the mountain villages as a Catholic lay preacher (Laientheologe).

[10] The St Charles Church (Karlskirche) in Volders represents a dramatic physical manifestation of Guarinonius's religious zeal.

It was constructed according to his own plans, and is today easily accessible from the motorway service area on the Inn Valley Autobahn (direction Kufstein).

[11] The church, built in the style sometimes described as "Venetian Baroque", exhibits an almost oriental flamboyance: it is one of the most important sacred buildings in what remains of the Austrian Tirol.

The inscription on his grave reads as follows: Passer by, see here The world famous Hippolytus Guarinonius, known for his virtue, doctrinal piety and nobility, physician to the Imperial Court and the Volders district, died on the final day of May 1754 and lies here beside his wife, ready to rejoice with the wider family in Christ in praise for the everlasting God He died at the end of May 1654, soon after the completion of the church, and two months before its formal consecration He was himself buried at the Karlskirche, where his body lies beneath a marble slab before the steps of the "Epiphany alter", together with that of his wife and two of his sons.

Topics include doctors and apothecaries, the ducking of women, digestion, mountains and plains, eaters and stuffers, Engadine comedies, calendar discrepancies, anecdotes about Eulenspiegel, foxes' tails, fencing schools.

It is particularly valued by scholars for insights it provides into unknown regional idioms and provincial colloquial expressions hitherto not traced to any form of written source.

These are entitled as follows: Also worth mentioning are his botanical publications that include "Hydrooeconomgania"[17] and "Chylosophiae academicae artis Aesculapiae novis astris illustratae tomi duo" which appeared respectively in 1640 and 1648.