Ambrosius Widmann

Ambrosius Widmann (* around 1477 in Baden-Baden ; † August 10, 1561, presumably in Rottenburg ), doctor in ecclesiastical and secular law ( utriusque iuris doctor ), was a German lawyer and cleric. In 1510 he was appointed the third provost chancellor of the University of Tübingen for life as the successor to Johannes Tegen and Johannes Vergenhans alias Nauclerus after a previous one-year provisional exercise of office .

After his legally contested dismissal in 1538 because of his resistance to the introduction of the Reformation at the University of Tübingen, he was reinstated in his Chancellery in 1550, but in 1556, due to the Augsburg Religious Peace of 1555, he transferred the exercise of his official powers until his death to the Rector and Senate of the University of Tübingen.

Life

Ambrosius Widmann was the second son of the influential Tübingen professor of medicine and count and ducal personal physician Johann Widmann-Salicetus and his wife Mechthild Bälz (Beltz). His older brother Beatus Widmann , who had also received his doctorate as utriusque iuris doctor , made a career as a councilor in Württemberg and Austrian services, most recently as Chancellor of Tyrol . One of Widmann's sister, Genoveva, was married to the long-time Württemberg chancellor Gregor Lamparter.

Widmann began his studies in the winter semester of 1490/1491 when he was around 13 years old at the Artistic Faculty of the University of Tübingen. There he received his bachelor's degree in March 1492. So far, nothing is known about his master's degree or his associated legal studies. His doctorate in ecclesiastical and secular law, which he acquired in 1506 at the latest, was probably obtained in Italy. In 1506, Heinrich Bebel, professor of rhetoric from Tübingen, named Widmann Ordinarius iuris civilis at the Tübingen Faculty of Law. In that year and in 1509 he was also one of the assessors at the Württemberg court .

Since February 9, 1509, Widmann appears in an initially provisional position in the post of provost, which the Tübingen university constitution had linked to the university's chancellery. After the previous incumbent Johannes Vergenhans alias Nauclerus died on January 5, 1510, Widmann was subsequently awarded the post of provost on March 3, 1510 by the Pope. A year later, in 1511, he was ordained a priest, whereby the one-year period for the subsequent acquisition of ordination was exceeded by a few months. After the formal conferment of the provost's office , Widmann gave up the office of assessor at the Reich Chamber of Commerce , for which he had been sworn in as successor to Sebastian Schilling six months earlier on September 5, 1509. In the same year, 1510, he had to give up his professorship, which was incompatible with the supervisory function of the university chancellery. Widmann's full professorship in secular law, however, was not given to the previous canon law professor Johannes Gentner alias Adler, Aquila, Halietus until September 1, 1510.

One of Widmann's sustained achievements in the administration of the provost's office was the renewal of the property register, combined with a revision of the provost's property. In the area of ​​university administration, one of his most important innovations is the employment book ( liber conductionum ) introduced in 1510 for the university professors, whose pro-memoria records probably held public faith. In addition to his benefice at the Tübingen monastery, he received a canonical at the cathedral in Augsburg in 1517 , in which he was not actually appointed as cathedral capitular until 1520 after he had completed his residency , and in the 1520s he also received a canonical burial in Spalt in Central Franconia and one of the canonical wedges at the cathedral in 1527 of Basel and the archdeaconate of this church.

After the Habsburgs took over Württemberg in 1520 , Widmann actively supported the Austrian reign in the teaching reform of the University of Tübingen in 1525, which was intended to consolidate traditional belief in connection with reforms in the humanistic sense, and in general in the struggle of the Catholic side against Protestant aspirations. Therefore, ten years later, he put up strong resistance against the now Protestant Tübingen university reform of 1535, which Duke Ulrich von Württemberg had initiated after the reconquest of his country in 1534. By escaping to the neighboring Austrian Rottenburg in 1535, Widmann succeeded in preventing the university from completing its doctoral degrees , as it could not award any academic degrees without his assistance.

On the basis of several reports, including by Martin Luther and Professor Philipp Melanchthon from Wittenberg , the ducal government then decided to depose Widmann because he had left his post and on November 29, 1538 appointed the previous dean of Stuttgart Johann Scheurer as the new provost and Chancellor of the University. Widmann formally protested against all doctorates completed under Johann Scheurer, so that general recognition of Tübingen doctorates outside of Württemberg seemed uncertain. After Widmann had been reinstated in his offices in February 1550, the Augsburg Religious Peace of 1555 moved him to delegate the exercise of his official powers to the rector and senate of the university at the end of 1556.

Ambrosius Widmann died on August 10, 1561 at the old age of over 80, presumably in Rottenburg, where he had become provost of the Ehingen monastery in 1541/1542. This paved the way for Duke Christoph of Württemberg to re-regulate the Chancellery in university regulations dated September 16, 1561.

literature

• Johann Baptist Sproll: Constitution of the Sankt Georgen-Stift zu Tübingen and its relationship to the university in the period from 1476-1534 , part 2, in: Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv 31 (1903), pp. 187–192.
• Wolfram Angerbauer : The Chancellery at the University of Tübingen and its owners 1590-1817 (Contubernium, Volume 4). JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen 1972, ISBN 3-16-833471-5 , pp. 1-5.
• Hermann Ehmer: End and Transformation. Southwest German collegiate churches in the Reformation , in: The collegiate church in southwest Germany. Tasks and Perspectives of Research , ed. by Sönke Lorenz and Oliver Auge (Writings on Southwest German Regional Studies, Volume 35). DRW-Verlag, Leinfelden-Echterdingen 2003, ISBN 3-87181-435-0 , pp. 211-237, here pp. 223f.
• Karl Konrad Finke: Ambrosius Widmann (around 1477 to 1561) , in: The Professors of the Tübingen Faculty of Law (1477–1535) (Tübingen professor catalog , volume 1,2), edited by Karl Konrad Finke. Jan Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2011, ISBN 978-3-7995-5452-7 , pp. 361-369.