Johann Latomus

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Johann Latomus, around 1560

Johann Latomus , also Johannes Latomus , origin. Steinmetz (born January 24, 1524 in Frankfurt am Main ; † August 7, 1598 ibid) was a Catholic canon and chronicler .

life and work

Latomus came from the Frankfurt patrician family Steinmetz that the exchange company to Frauenstein belonged. Already his uncle Peter Niclas called Steinmetz was canon of the imperial monastery St. Bartholomäus under the name Petrus Latomus , since 1531 as its dean . In 1535, two years after the introduction of the Reformation and the ban on Catholic worship in the imperial city of Frankfurt, Steinmetz converted to Protestant teaching and married Anna Burckhardt , the widowed daughter of Gilbrecht Burckhardt von Höchst . With her he had two daughters and lived as a hospital master in the Großer Engel house on the Römerberg . Peter's brother Hans Niclas stayed with his sons Kaspar and Johann in the Catholic faith, to which since 1533 only a small minority of the Frankfurt citizenship belonged.

While his older brother Kaspar remained in the city council and even became a younger mayor in 1566 , Johann embarked on a spiritual career. He studied in Cologne , Bergen , Mainz and Freiburg , acquired the academic degree of a Magister and finally joined the Frankfurt Bartholomäusstift as a canon in 1543. In 1548 the city accepted the Augsburg interim and gave the Frankfurt collegiate and monastery churches, including the Bartholomäuskirche, back to the Archdiocese of Mainz in order not to endanger the city's privileges as the place of choice and coronation of the Roman-German emperors .

In 1551 Latomus was custodian of the Bartholomäusstift and in 1561 its dean. He reorganized the administration of the monastery and tried in 1564 to bring the Jesuit order to the Dominican monastery . The Lutheran preachers , above all Hartmann Beyer and Matthias Ritter , protested at the city council and forced the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1566. Through his position as confidante of Archbishop of Mainz Daniel Brendel von Homburg and as imperial commissioner for the 1579 of Emperor Rudolf II. arranged book censorship in the Frankfurt fair had Latomus still affect the Frankfurt policy. In his will, Latomus donated the Catholic alms box as a counterpart to the general alms box introduced in 1531 , to which the city had entrusted the welfare of the poor , the maintenance of the Protestant churches and the keeping of the baptismal, mourning and death registers .

From today's perspective, Latomus is primarily important as the author of two handwritten Frankfurt Chronicles in Latin. The antiques , which were essentially written in 1562, were for internal use in the Bartholomäusstift. As the first modern chronicler, he tried, among other things, to determine the location of the Carolingian royal palace of Frankfurt mentioned in medieval documents . Latomus assumed its origin in the Saalhof , the oldest surviving Frankfurt building, which he believed to be the Palatinate of Ludwig the Pious . For the antiques he used older chronicles and the archive of the Bartholomäusstift.

The second chronicle, created in 1583 under the name Acta aliquot vetustiora in civitate Francofurtensi ab aetate Pipini parvi Francorum regis usque ad tumultum rusticum, id est annum 1525, was intended for a wider public. It deals with the time from Pippin the Short to the Frankfurt guild uprising in 1525, with which the Reformation teaching began to prevail in Frankfurt. Although Latomus took a harshly anti-Lutheran standpoint and described him as a special tool of the devil , the Acta also found great interest in the Protestant citizenship. Earlier Frankfurt chronicles only dealt with personal experiences or did not go back to earlier than the beginning of the 14th century.

Works

  • Historia de Monguntinis Episcopis
  • Historia Principum Austrasiae a Carolo Hastano usque ad Philippum III Hispaniae regem
  • Antiquitates quaedam civitatis et potissimum ecclesiae Francfordensis
  • Origo et progressus coenobii Canonicorum regularium ordinis S. Augustini de Corsendoncq
  • Acta aliquot vetustiora in civitate Francofurtensi (...)

The two chronicles Antiquitates and Acta are handwritten. They were published in the Sources for Frankfurt History in 1884 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Richard Froning: Frankfurter Chroniken and annalistic records of the Middle Ages . Volume 1 of sources on Frankfurt history. Jügel, Frankfurt am Main 1884, p. XVIII-XX ( Text Archive - Internet Archive [accessed March 16, 2019]).
  2. ^ Hermann Dechent : Church history of Frankfurt am Main since the Reformation. First volume . Kesselringsche Hofbuchhandlung (E. v. Mayer), Leipzig, Frankfurt a. M. 1913, p. 172-173 .
personal data
SURNAME Latomus, Johann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Latomus, Johannes (full name); Steinmetz, Johann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Catholic chaplain and chronicler
DATE OF BIRTH January 24, 1524
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH August 7, 1598
Place of death Frankfurt am Main