Jörg Brunner

Jörg Brunner (* before 1520 from Landsberg am Lech ; † after 1571 ) was a theologian and pre-reformer in Kleinhöchstetten and the city of Bern .

Life

Jörg Brunner came to Bern from Landsberg in Bavaria at a young age with his mother and siblings. In 1520 he became chaplain of the Canons of St. Vincent. At the beginning of 1522 he came to Münsingen as a helper to Dean Ulrich Güntisperger. Because Brunner referred to the Pope as an Antichrist in a sermon on John 16.5, the dean , as the successor to the exiled Johann Wecker, transferred him to the small pilgrimage church of Kleinhöchstetten as a priest. The German mass priest Wecker had preached against the funeral masses for the fallen of the Milan campaigns and the mercenaries and thus exposed himself to the wrath of the Bernese authorities. Like Wecker, Brunner was influenced by Luther's theses , he delivered critical sermons on the papacy and the grievances in the church. He found approval among the population and was very popular. At the same time, however, this aroused the disapproval and envy of his colleagues, “the Chamberlain of the Chapter, Jakob Trayer, Kirchherr zu Wichtrach; Mag. Hans Mannberger, Lord of the Church in Thun ; Mag. Gabriel Löwensprung, Kirchherr zu Walkringen; Mr. Joh. Kyburger, Kirchherr zu Biglen »and his dean. They sued him at the city council of Bern and demanded that he be transferred to the Bishop of Constance . The council itself called a court on August 29, 1522 in the Barefoot Monastery. In the public hearing in front of five councilors, including Mr. Sebastian von Stein from Münsingen, with eight other theologians, Brunner convincingly invoked the Bible and was right. He was allowed to continue his office unmolested - until 1525 the Old Believers with Mr. von Stein again had the upper hand in Bern. Because Brunner refused to read the mass, he was expelled and, despite his rehabilitation, did not return to Bern two years later.

The hearing of Georg Brunner before the secular and spiritual judges was the first disputation, the first religious conversation in Bern and was thus a pioneer for the further course of the Reformation.

From 1529–1533 Brunner worked in the parish of Benken (BL) and participated in the first Reformed Synod of Basel under Johannes Oekolampad . Here at his new place of work, too, he had to face the hostility of the Old Believers, as can be seen from reports from the time, also that Brunner had meanwhile married. In 1533 the pastor's family had to leave the village because of a fatal dispute between a landlady and the pastor's wife. After that, nothing was learned from Brunner for years. It was not until 1564 that he reappeared as a pastor in Jegenstorf , tired of old age, he resigned in 1571 and "received a personal treasure in 1572 because of his age". The later life and death of the indefatigable fighter for the new faith Jörg Brunner is in the dark.

literature

• Ernst Walder: Brunner, Jörg. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Ernst Walder: Reformation and the modern state . In: 450 Years of the Bern Reformation. Contributions to the history of the Bern Reformation and to Niklaus Manuel . Historical Association of the Canton of Bern 1980, ISBN 3-85731-004-9 , pp. 484–506.

Web links

• Theodor Bögli: Jörg Brunner, a Bernese pre-reformer
• F.Studer-Trechsel: Georg Brunner Kilchherr zu Klein-Höchstetten in Berner Taschenbuch on the year 1885, Volume 34, p. 224

Individual evidence

1. ↑ F.Studer-Trechsel: Georg Brunner p. 230
2. ↑ Carl Friedrich Ludwig Lohner: "The Reformed Churches and their Heads in the Federal Free State of Bern" (Thun 1865), p. 410.
3. ↑ T. Bögli: Jörg Brunner, pp. 5–8