Ambrosius closing time

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Ambrosius Feierabend (* around 1490; † after 1543) was a clergyman and reformer. In 1539 he was pastor of the Dreikönigskirche in Elbing . His departure from the Catholic doctrine of the Lord's Supper was signaled by the Reformation in the Diocese of Warmia .

Life

Youth and studies after work and the beginning of professional life are in the dark.

Appointment to pastor of the Dreikönigskirche

The Heilig-Drei-König-Kirche, first mentioned in 1341, was the parish church of the new town founded in 1340 as an extension of Elbing. If a new pastor was to be filled, the parish traditionally had the right to propose two clergymen to the Elbing City Council as the patron of the church, who usually chose one of these candidates.

After the council and the citizens of Elbing had adhered to the Reformation since 1523, and the availability of evangelical preachers in Wittenberg in view of the fact that at least five students from Elbing from Elbing were able to study in Wittenberg between 1519 and 1523, someone who represented an evangelical opinion was appointed at the end of the day Pastor.

The first phase of the Reformation in Elbing 1525–1526

After the events in Danzig in January 1525, in February 1525 there was also an uprising against the council regiment in the smaller sister city of Elbing, with the Lutheran pastor of the Epiphany and the former Carmelite Matthias Bienwald standing behind them. The latter had come to Elbing at the end of February 1525 after the council had asked the city of Danzig to send a Lutheran preacher.

The representatives of the community forced the expulsion of most of the council members and their replacement with new candidates, who were also presented to the council.

The Catholic restoration in Elbing 1526–1539

After nine months, however, the Polish king took care of a political and ecclesiastical restoration, as in Danzig. In 1526 the new body was ousted and the Catholic order and the patrician regiment were restored.

Bienwald had to leave Elbing again because of the Catholic advance. A renewed outbreak of the Lutheran spirit in Elbing should be prevented by the obligation of the provost of the old town parish church to obtain the approval not only of the council, but also of the bishop of Warmia for the appointment of new preachers.

Ultimately, however, it was an attempt at an interim compromise, which over time was undermined by the more active Protestant camp, especially since after work remained in office and dignity. His toleration shows that the old council clung to its Lutheran position on the sidelines.

The council also tried to promote Protestant specialists. For example, Wilhelm Gnapheus , who had been imprisoned twice in his Dutch homeland because of his support for the Reformation, was appointed rector of the grammar school that was newly founded in 1535.

The Edict of Johannes Dantiscus

Against this background, Johannes Dantiscus , who was appointed Bishop of Warmia in 1537, issued a strict "mandate against heresy" on March 21, 1539 as part of his efforts to curb the spread of Protestantism, in which he told his subjects to remain with the old (Catholic ) Ordered church teaching, threatened the reading of the writings of Luther and his followers with severe penalties, and ordered the extradition and destruction of these writings. Anyone who does not want to be Catholic has to leave the diocese within a month and will be severely punished when they return.

Evening charges of heresy

Nevertheless (or as a reaction to it) Ambrosius Feierabend denied the presence of Christ in the Eucharist from the pulpit of the Dreikönigskirche at the beginning of July 1539 and introduced a Protestant doctrine of the Lord's Supper in Elbing. When Dantiscus learned of the "heretical" views of the pastor in Elbing, he had him summoned to his court for questioning. After work escaped, however.

Angry about such “blasphemy”, Dantiscus wrote to the Elbingen council after fleeing in the evening on July 24, 1539, that he should have arrested and chained after work. Dantiscus had property confiscated in the evening and transferred it to the St-Georgenhospital, in which the clergy of the Three Kings exercised pastoral care at the time.

After work, he fled to the (already Protestant) Bishop of Samland Georg von Polenz , who, with the consent of Duke Albrecht I of Brandenburg-Ansbach , had initiated the Reformation in Prussia and, after the conversion of the religious order into a secular duchy in 1525, a large number of Protestant clergymen Country called.

Bishop Dantiscus then sent his brother Georg as an envoy to Duke Albrecht. On July 27, 1539, he referred the duke to the pastor who, as a "blasphemer of Christian doctrine", had "referred to the sacrament of bread not as the body of the Lord but as bad bread" in his sermon and escaped from Elbing and from Bishop of Warmia was accepted as chaplain.

On the occasion of the demand for a punishment of the "lost" pastor for the "public abuse of the sacrament of the altar", Duke Albrecht personally took care of the matter and asked Georg von Polenz for more information on this matter in a letter of August 15, 1539 he himself had no knowledge of the whereabouts of the fugitive chaplain, and asked the Elbing City Council for safe passage for the evening, which the council refused.

Obviously, the city council now shied away from a renewed confrontation with Dantiscus, who on April 15, 1540 issued a further "mandate against the Lutherei" which, as an aggravation, even offered the prospect of the death penalty: "In the event of loss of property, proscription or reprimand all royal lands, no one Lutheran or poisonous society should have books, read or hear reading (...) ”.

End of work as a Protestant pastor in the Mohrungen district after 1539

After work was evidently not punished and then worked as a Protestant pastor in the Mohrungen district . Its burgrave Peter zu Dohna had already been asked by Duke Albrecht in 1525 to decide to establish a different Christian order.

Work ended around 1542 as pastor of the church “St. Peter and Paul ”in Mohrungen and in 1543 as pastor in the parish of Weinsdorf in the parish of Saalfeld belonging to the Mohrungen district.

Journey to Elbing 1543

As part of his thorough church visit, Duke Albrecht visited Mohrungen from February 6 to 20, 1543, accompanied by the Samland bishop of Polenz, where there was apparently a meeting after work, who wanted to travel to Elbing and pick up his property still there. Subsequently, Duke Albrecht asked the city council in a letter dated February 21, 1543 for protection and security for the "ducal subject Ambrosius Feirabendt".

However, despite its liberal course, the local city council tried to comply with the edict of Johannes Dantiscus and to arrest the end of the day in view of his earlier "church outrages" after his arrival. After accommodation in Elbing was refused at the end of the day and he was again barely able to avoid being captured by six municipal enforcement officers, Duke Albrecht asked him to report on the situation in the city after he returned after work.

Subsequently, in a letter dated March 14, 1543, Albrecht reprimanded the Elbing City Council for the unjustified treatment of the pastor in his opinion, asked for the reason for the refusal to surrender the property at the end of the day, and again for the goodwill handover.

Another fate

Further fate in the evening is not recorded. In view of the fact that the Reformation was only officially introduced to the local parish churches by the Elbing City Council in 1571, he does not seem to have returned to Elbing and to have worked again in the Mohrungen district, where the next one did not appear until 1553 Pastor is mentioned in a document.

The brothers Christoph and Michael Feyerabend, who also worked as pastors in Elbing from 1655; were probably not closely related to Ambrosius after work; they came from Königsberg (see also Christian Feyerabend ).

literature

  • Anton Eichhorn: History of the Warmian Bishops' elections, in: Journal for the history and ancient history of Warmia, 1860, pp. 269–383
  • Albert Reusch: Wilhelm Gnapheus, the first rector of the Elbinger Gymnasium (2nd part), in: Gymnasium zu Elbing: Programm 1877, p. 13
  • Leopold Friedrich Prowe : Nicolaus Copernicus , 1883, p. 343
  • Eugen Gustav Kerstan: The Protestant Church of the City and District of Elbing , 1917
  • Helene Deppner: The church-political relationship between Elbing and the Bishop of Warmia during the period of Polish rule (1466–1772) , in: Elbinger Jahrbuch 11, 1933 (pp. 121–236), p. 152
  • Hermann Kesten : Copernicus and his world . 1953, p. 322
  • Wolf Wrangel: Der Kreis Mohrungen , 1967, p. 64
  • Stanislaw Waldoch: Poczatki reformacji w Elblagu i jego regionie (in: Rocznik Elblaski 4, 1969, pp. 9–43), p. 22
  • Arthur Weyde: Mohrungen in Ostpreußen , 1972, p. 50
  • Gottfried Schramm : Danzig, Elbing and Thorn as examples of the urban reformation (1517–1558) , in: Erich Hassinger u. a .: Historia Integra, 1977, p. 125 ff.
  • Friedwald Moeller: Old Prussian Protestant Pastor's Book , Volume 1, 1986.
  • Stefan Hartmann: Duke Albrecht of Prussia and the Diocese of Warmia: 1525–1550 , 1991, p. 321 f.
  • Michael G. Müller : Second Reformation and Urban Autonomy in Royal Prussia: Danzig, Elbing and Thorn in the Epoch of Confessionalization (1557–1660) , 1997, p. 43
  • Christoph Schmidt: Sown on rocks: the Reformation in Poland and Livonia , 2000, p. 136 f
  • Albert and Ursula Benninghoven: The relations of Duke Albrechts of Prussia to cities, the bourgeoisie and the nobility in western Prussia (1525–1554): Regesta from the Ducal Letter Archive and the East Prussian Foliants , 2006, p. 882 ff.
  • Paul Tschackert : Document book on the history of the Reformation of the Duchy of Prussia , 2008, p. 123 f.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kerstan, p. 70
  2. ↑ a b Kerstan, p. 74
  3. ^ Schmidt, p. 135
  4. ↑ a b Schmidt, p. 136
  5. ↑ a b c Schramm, p. 141
  6. ↑ a b c d Schramm, p. 147
  7. ↑ Müller, p. 43
  8. ↑ a b c d Deppner, p. 152
  9. ↑ a b c d Prowe, p. 343
  10. ↑ a b c d Eichhorn, p. 341
  11. ↑ a b c Kesten, p. 322
  12. ↑ Waldoch, p. 22
  13. ↑ Müller, p. 431
  14. ↑ Reusch, p. 13
  15. ↑ Kerstan, p. 75
  16. ↑ Hartmann, p. 321
  17. ↑ Hartmann, p. 322
  18. ↑ a b Tschackert, p. 126
  19. ↑ a b Weyde, p. 50
  20. ↑ a b c Benninghoven, p. 891
  21. ↑ Moeller
  22. ^ Wrangel, p. 64
  23. ↑ Benninghoven, p. 882
  24. ↑ Kerstan, p. 17
  25. ↑ Kerstan, p. 116
personal data
SURNAME End of the day, Ambrosius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Clergyman and reformer
DATE OF BIRTH around 1490
DATE OF DEATH after 1543