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[German Version] (cf. Augsburg Confession; Augsburg Interim; Augsburg, Peace of). For a Christian community in the Roman colony Augusta Vindelicorum there is no certain evidence; not until 565 is the characteristic local cult of the martyr Afra attested. Augsburg was certainly an episcopal see from the 8th century. The close connection between bishop and kingd…

[German Version] (Feb 25, 1591, Kaiserswerth – Aug 7, 1635, Trier), joined the Jesuits in 1610 and worked for the order as a theological teacher in support of the Counter-Reformation; in 1629 he was appointed professor of theology in Trier. He owes his importance not to his role as an academic theologian but to his unique combination of piety, literary talent, and active commitment to the suffering. His major religious works, the Güldenes Tugend-Buch and Trutz-Nachtigall, published posthumously in 1649, influenced confessional Roman Catholic religiosity through literat…

[German Version] (Philippson; 1506, Schleiden, Eifel – Oct 30, 1556, Straßburg [Strasbourg]). After a Humanistic education, Sleidanus began working in the French diplomatic service. Prior to 1530, Melanchthon’s writings had already won him to the cause of the Reformation. Personal contact with the Protestant theologians at the religious disputations in Hagenau (Haguenau) and Regensburg in 1540/1541 inspired him to write historical attacks on the papacy. In 1545 he entered the service of the Schmal…

[German Version] (Feb 27 or Apr 11, 1501, Warburg – Apr 5, 1553, Hannover). Dismissed from the Cistercian abbey in Riddagshausen in 1523 because of his sympathies for Luther, Corvinus taught himself Reformation theology. In 1528, he obtained a preaching post in Goslar, in 1529, a pastorate in Witzenhausen, Hessen. On the commission of Landgrave Philip of Hessen, he disputed in 1535/36 with the imprisoned Anabaptists in Münster. In 1537, Corvinus signed the Schmalkaldic Articles ; in 1541, he participated as an auditor in the Regensburg religious …

[German Version] Maria Laach, Benedictine abbey on the Laacher See in the Eifel range. The abbey was founded around 1093 by the count palatine of the Rhine Heinrich II as a family foundation; in 1111 or 1112 it was made a priory of Affligem Abbey (Flanders) and thus became associated with the ordo cluniacensis (Cluny). It was made an abbey between 1135 and 1138. The Romanesque church, consecrated in 1156 and largely still in its original form, is a basilica with three naves and a double choir. Its monumental simplicity ideally expresses the self-u…

[German Version] The first Western monastic rules originated in the circle around Augustine; the influence of Eastern examples (Pachomius, Basil the Great) is evident. Transmitted as Augustinian texts are: (1) the “Praeceptum,” consisting of 12 chapters, which may have been written by Augustine himself c. 397, (2) the “Regularis informatio,” an addendum to (Pseudo?-) Augustine's Ep. 211, an adaptation for women's convents first attested in the 6th century, and (3) the “Ordo monasterii,” a brief order for external cloistered life from the 5th/6th century. From the 11th century, …

[German Version] Until a council could settle the controverted theological issues, the first Diet of Speyer in 1526 had left it to the discretion of the territorial authorities in their responsibility toward God and the emperor to enforce the terms of the Edict of Worms (1521) against Luther and his followers. This decision provided the evangelical princes and cities a basis for institutionalizing the Reformation within the framework of a polity that put governance of the church in the hands of th…

[German Version] (of Goch; c. 1415, Goch – Mar 28, 1475, Thabor, near Mechelen), reforming theologian. As a sometime member of the Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life in Amersfoort, he was influenced by the devotio moderna; he combined a nominalism that is associated with his name and Augustinianism, emphasized the authority of the Bible as the basis of Christian discipleship inspired by grace, and rejected any special merit associated with monastic vows. His writings, little noticed in the 15…

[German Version] (Jul 25, 1450, Schlettstadt [Sélestat] – Nov 17, 1528, Schlettstadt), Humanist (Humanism). After studying philosophy, law, and theology at Freiburg, Erfurt, and Heidelberg (where he was rector of the university in 1481/1482), he served as cathedral vicar in Speyer from 1484 to 1498, then occupied a chair of poetry and rhetoric at Heidelberg until 1501 and finally worked as a teacher and writer in Straßburg (Strasbourg) and Schlettstadt. He championed a renewal of education based on the Latin writers and poets of antiquity, the patristic period, and the Middle Ages ( Sty…

[German Version] (1488/1489, Zutphen – Dec 10, 1524, near Heide). From 1520 onward, the observant Augustinian hermit Henry of Zutphen absorbed the theology of the Reformation as a student in Wittenberg and, in 1521, proceeded to expound it in a series of theses on justification and the priestly mediation of salvation. In 1522, he was appointed prior in Antwerp, but ¶ had to flee before the Inquisition in the same year. As a preacher in Bremen, he subsequently secured the implementation of the Reformation in that city. A preaching assignment in Dithmarsche…

[German Version] (Jul 12, 1477, Modena – Oct 18, 1547, Rome). In 1513 Leo X appointed Sadoleto, a Humanist famed for his linguistic skill, to the Curia for its diplomatic service; in 1517 he made him bishop of Carpentras. Sadoleto took the Reformation in Germany as a challenge to engage in his own theological work. He interpreted Pss 50 and 93 (1525/1530) with a clear interest in the moral renewal of the clergy. His commentary on Romans (1535) emphasized human free will vis-à-vis God so strongly that even Catholic theologians condemned it as semi-Pelagian. In 1536 he was appo…

[German Version] (von; after 1500, Fliesteden near Cologne – Sep 28, 1529, Melaten near Cologne). Fliesteden, who cannot be more precisely identified biographically, was a typical proponent of the Reformation as an anti-clerical lay movement. He was imprisoned in 1527, after he demonstratively expressed the Reformation critique of the understanding of the mass as a sacrifice in the Cologne Cathedral by spitting during the elevation of the host. In the subsequent trial, he announced his resolute re…

[German Version] (Gerlacus Petri; c. 1375, Deventer – Nov 18, 1411, Windesheim). As a member of the Windesheim Congregation, which he joined before 1400 on the advice of his spiritual teacher Florentius Radewyns, Gerlach was influential through the example of his religious life (description in the Chronicon Windeshemense by J.Busch) and through his writing. Preserved are the Latin works Soliloquium and Breviloquium in addition to two epistolary tractates addressed in middle-Dutch to his sister. In these, Gerlach combines the mysticism of Jan van Ruysbroek…

[German Version] (Rieger; May 1489, Langenargen – May 27, 1541, Celle). A student of J. Eck’s, Rhegius was appointed preacher at Augsburg cathedral, but in 1521 he accepted Luther’s understanding of the gospel and lost his position. After preaching in Hall and Tirol, he returned to Augsburg in 1524, where he served as a Protestant preacher in the city’s employ. He wrote numerous works expounding the doctrine of the Reformation movement, concentrating on the message of justification of sinners and …

[German Version] (Vos; c. 1500, ’s-Hertogenbosch – Jul 1, 1523, Brussels), Augustinian Hermit in the Antwerp convent of Henry of Zutphen. After Henry’s flight, on Oct 6, 1522, 16 members were arrested on suspicion of heretical views. Three of them refused to recant: Voes and Jan van Esschen were burned at the stake, while Lambert Thorn (died Sep 1528) remained imprisoned for the rest of his life. The fate of the two Dutch martyrs inspired Luther’s “Letter to the Christians in the Netherlands” (WA …

[German Version] 1509, Clausen near Barmen – Sep 9, 1564, Düsseldorf), Humanist teacher. After his own studies in Münster and Cologne, Monheim taught first in Essen and Cologne; c. 1545 he became director of the Düsseldorf Gymnasium recently founded by Duke William V of Jülich-Kleve-Berg (1539–1592). He edited writings of Erasmus of Rotterdam for school use, wrote textbooks and school regulations, and made his school into a center of Humanist education. His 1560 catechism, structured as a series o…

[German Version] (Gerardus Magnus; Oct, 1340, Deventer, The Netherlands – Aug 20,1384, Deventer) was the founder of the Devotio moderna . From an affluent patrician family, Groote became a canon in Aachen (1368) and in Utrecht (1371) after extended and wideranging studies (beginning in 1355, primarily in Paris). Under the influence of Henry of Kalkar, he converted in 1373, which initially took the form of turning away from secular sciences and lifestyle and turning to the duties of his church pos…

[German Version] (1456, Prierio – 1523 or 1527, Rome), Dominican, Thomist university teacher, papal court theologian ( magister sacri Palatii) from 1515. In the spring of 1518 Prierias wrote, at the behest of Leo X, his Dialogus de potestate papae, a theological assessment of Luther’s theses on indulgences, emphasizing in connection with his dissent from church authority (Primacy, Papal): “Whoever . . . says that the Roman church should not do what it actually does is a heretic” (Fabisch & Iserloh, 56). After Luther’s Responsio (WA 1, 644–686) there followed Replica (late 1518) and the Ep…

[German Version] (Hans Wunderl[e], Hans Vischer; born circa 1500 in St. Peter near Linz – died after 1539). After studying art in Vienna, Bünderlin worked as pastor to a Protestant-minded upper Austrian noble and joined the Linz Anabaptist congregation around 1527. He escaped persecution by moving to Nikolsburg and Strasbourg, thereafter living an unsettled it…

[German Version] (Dec 27, 1493, Wasserburg am Inn – Jan 1, 1573, Leipzig), Reformation theologian, a pupil of Luther and Melanchthon. As the first Protestant superintendent (from 1540) and professor of theology (from 1544) in Leipzig, Pfeffinger played a decisive part in the introduction of the Reformation in Albertine Saxony. Both in theological teaching and in church policy (in 1548/1549 he helped to implement the Augsburg Interim in Ernestine Saxony), he was guided by Melanchthon. When Pfeffinger developed the latter’s idea of the active participation of the human ¶ will in the p…