Andreas Musculus

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Andreas Musculus

Andreas Musculus (also: Andreas Meusel ; born November 29, 1514 in Schneeberg ; † September 29, 1581 in Frankfurt (Oder) ) was a Protestant theologian and reformer.

Life

He attended the Latin school in his hometown under Hieronymus Weller and went to the University of Leipzig in the summer semester of 1531 , where he obtained the degree of Baccalaureus after three years . After spending a few years as a private tutor, he went to Wittenberg in 1538 to train as a theologian.

At the University of Wittenberg he obtained his master's degree and was recommended to the University of Frankfurt (Oder) in 1541 by his brother-in-law, the reformer Johannes Agricola . Since Alexander Alesius left Frankfurt, there was no longer a doctor of theology there, and in 1546 the elector asked Konrad Cordatus from Stendal to come to Frankfurt to do his doctorate on Musculus and Johann Lüdecke .

Cordatus went on the journey, but fell ill and died on the way. Instead, Theodor Fabricius from Zerbst stepped into the gap. Meanwhile, Musculus began to attack his colleague Lüdecke, his teacher Philipp Melanchthon and the Wittenberg theologians. Lüdecke came to Stendal, Musculus was promoted to full professor and for a long time was the only theologian in Frankfurt. After Agricola's death he was also general superintendent of the Mark Brandenburg .

He was always at odds with someone all his life; with Lüdecke, with Francesco Stancaro , who came to Frankfurt from Königsberg (Prussia), with the renegade Friedrich Staphylus , and finally with Abdias Praetorius , who represented Philipp Melanchthon's point of view on the question of good works. This last argument wavered back and forth for years. After Agricola's death, Musculus took over the theological leadership in the marrow. He turned sharply against the Philippists and, accordingly, against Calvinism .

In his last years he worked on the Brandenburg Corpus doctrinae and also on the final version of the Formula Concordiae . His sovereign Joachim II showed him great confidence and supported the often overzealous, passionate preacher and church leader.

His prayer books Precationes ex veteribus orthodoxis doctoribus and prayer booklet from 1559, which made the tradition of pseudo-Augustinian meditations at home in Lutheranism and had many editions, were formative for Protestant piety and church music . Heinrich Schütz took almost half of the texts for his Cantiones sacrae (1625) from the Latin version , as did Dietrich Buxtehude for his works.

In his books about the devil he criticized the bad habits and depravity of his time that were to be found in everyday life. Even if Musculus was not the first author of a book of the devil , his works sparked the fashion of these writings, mostly written by Lutheran pastors, in the 50s and 60s of the 16th century. His devil books were great sales successes and were reprinted several times in quick succession by various printers. In Hosenteufel he complains about the fashion of baggy and baggy pants. He was inspired to do this work by a public event. On a Sunday in 1555 a colleague from Musculus had preached a sermon in the church in Frankfurt an der Oder against the reprehensible clothing of harem pants and admonished the audience to fight this outrageous fashion. On the next Sunday - to the great annoyance of Musculus - a pair of harem pants hung opposite the pulpit in the church, which had probably been nailed there by a student (the harem pants were particularly liked by young people). Then Musculus wrote an impressive sermon, which was printed in the same year: Vom Hosen Teuffel .

In his Eheteufel , published in 1556, he denounced the vices with which the married couple make life difficult for one another and destroy the marital peace. In addition, within this genre of Musculus there is also a Fluchteufel (1556) and a general work on The Devil's Tyranny (1561).

literature

Web links

Commons : Andreas Musculus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ AA Abert: The stylistic requirements of the "Cantiones sacrae" by Heinrich Schütz . Wolfenbüttel 1935, p. 2
personal data
SURNAME Musculus, Andreas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meusel, Andreas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Protestant theologian and reformer
DATE OF BIRTH November 29, 1514
PLACE OF BIRTH Schneeberg
DATE OF DEATH September 29, 1581
Place of death Frankfurt (Oder)