Christopher Crell-Spinowski

Christopher Crell-Spinowski (Polish Krzysztof Crell-Spinowski , Latin Crellius Spinovius , * 1622 in Rakau , † December 12, 1680 ) was a Unitarian theologian and an important representative of the Polish Brothers .

Live and act

Crell-Spinowski was born in Rakau in 1622 as the son of the German-Polish Unitarian theologian Johannes Crellius . Here he began to study theology at the Rakau Academy , of which his father was temporarily rector. After the academy closed, he continued his studies at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands . After his return from the Netherlands, he was in 1650 preacher of the Unitarian congregation in Lower Silesia (dt. Krzelów Krehlau ), from 1654 to 1659 in the small Polish Rąbkowa and then in the Upper Silesian Kluczbork (dt. Kreuzburg ), where his first two sons Christopher (1658) and Samuel (1660) were born. His first wife died here in 1666. In 1669 he finally moved to Masurian Andreaswalde (Polish: Kosinowo ) in East Prussia , where he edited his father's writings and later had them printed in Amsterdam. He made several trips to the Netherlands and England. In 1677, his third son Pavel was born in the second marriage.

Like his father, Crell-Spinowski decided to become a Unitarian theologian and pastor, but experienced the increasing religious persecution of the Polish Brothers at the time of the Catholic Counter-Reformation , which ultimately led to the end of the Unitarian Church in Poland-Lithuania . Leading representatives of the Polish Unitarians were forced to emigrate . Crell-Spinowski himself moved to the East Prussian Andreaswalde, where a Unitarian parish existed until the 19th century. Crell-Spinowski thus stands for the process of transformation of the Unitarian Church from a territorial church, which is essentially limited to Poland-Lithuania, to a community in exile and thus helped Unitarianism to spread in England, among others. On his travels to the Netherlands and England he asked for help for the persecuted Polish-Lithuanian Unitarians. His son Samuel Crell later became a preacher himself in the exile congregations of the Polish Brothers in Germany and lived temporarily in the Netherlands. His son Christopher later also studied in Leiden and received his doctorate in medicine in July 1682 , after which he was supported in the form of a licentiate from the British Royal College of Physicians . Crell-Spinowski died in 1680 on returning from one of his trips.

literature

Paul Wrzecionko: Reformation and Early Enlightenment in Poland , Göttingen 1977.
Margaret DeLacy: The Germ of an Idea: Contagionism, Religion, and Society in Britain, 1660-1730 , 2016, ISBN 978-1-349-57558-9

Individual evidence

↑ Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg : Denomination and migration between Brandenburg-Prussia and Poland-Lithuania 1640–1772. A reassessment . In: Joachim Bahlcke (ed.): Religious refugees. Causes, forms and effects of early modern denominational migration in Europe (= religious and cultural history in east-central and south-east Europe , vol. 4). Lit, Münster 2008, ISBN 978-3-8258-6668-6 , pp. 119–144, here p. 130.

personal data
SURNAME	Crell-Spinowski, Christopher
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Krzysztof Crell-Spinowski, Crellius Spinovius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Unitarian theologian and preacher
DATE OF BIRTH	1622
PLACE OF BIRTH	Rakau
DATE OF DEATH	December 12, 1680

[1] Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg : Denomination and migration between Brandenburg-Prussia and Poland-Lithuania 1640–1772. A reassessment . In: Joachim Bahlcke (ed.): Religious refugees. Causes, forms and effects of early modern denominational migration in Europe (= religious and cultural history in east-central and south-east Europe , vol. 4). Lit, Münster 2008, ISBN 978-3-8258-6668-6 , pp. 119–144, here p. 130.