Johannes Aepinus

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Johannes Aepinus, copper engraving from 1553

Johannes Aepinus also: Johann Hoeck, Huck, Hugk, Hoch or Äpinus (* around 1499 in Ziesar ; † May 13, 1553 in Hamburg ) was a German Protestant theologian and reformer .

Life

Career as a reformer

Aepinus was born as the son of councilor Hans Hoeck in Ziesar, Brandenburg, in 1499. Already in his early youth he entered the Premonstratensian monastery Belbuck near Treptow on Rega . Under his teachers Johannes Bugenhagen and Hermann Bonnus he enjoyed an education in the ancient languages ​​and did his first theological studies. In 1518 he went to Wittenberg , where he matriculated at the university on October 1st. Through his teachers Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon , he was soon familiarized with the ideas of the Reformation and on March 13, 1520, he acquired the academic degree of Baccalaureus .

After completing his studies, he returned to his home country and became head of a school in Brandenburg . He represented the Protestant doctrine and thus attracted the hostility of the Elector Joachim I of Brandenburg , who persecuted and imprisoned him at the instigation of his theological opponents. When he was able to escape captivity through friends, he was not allowed to return to the Mark Brandenburg .

Presumably returned to the Saxon area, Hoeck, on the advice of Melanchthon , graced his name to Aepinus (= Αἰπινός = high). After returning from exile, Aepinus taught in Greifswald and Stralsund . In Stralsund he was rector of a private school in St. Johanniskirchhof from 1524 to 1528. Aepinus was commissioned by the city council of Stralsund to work out a Protestant church order , which was introduced on November 5, 1525 and is known as the first Protestant church order.

In April 1529 there was a Flensburg disputation with the Baptist Melchior Hofmann on the doctrine of the Lord's Supper in Flensburg . Here Johannes Bugenhagen Aepinus brought in. When Bugenhagen reformed the church system in Hamburg in June 1529 , Aepinus was appointed the first pastor at St. Petri, after Bugenhagen's friend Johannes Boldewan , as pastor of Belzig, was on leave from summer 1528 to May / June 1529 , preacher at St. Petri and then returned to Belzig, where he died in the Advent season in 1533. In Hamburg the cathedral chapter fiercely opposed the Reformation, so that Aepinus counteracted it with two writings that he dedicated to the city council. In it the papal heresies were listed, the epitoms of the Lutheran faith propagated and a dispute about the correct understanding of the doctrine of the Lord's Supper was held.

As part of the reform of the church and school system in Hamburg, Bugenhagen had drafted a church order that was adopted on May 15, 1529. It also called for a superintendent for Hamburg. For this, the church ordinance provided for significant teaching and preaching activities for the city as well as the right of suggestion, supervision and disciplinary law for all offices in the church and school service in Hamburg. This office should be filled by a qualified person holding a doctorate in theology. On May 18, 1532, Aepinus was appointed Hamburg's first superintendent. With the superintendence he also took over the position of pastor and lecturer primarius at the cathedral .

Since Aepinus only had the academic degree of a Baccalaurus, he turned to Wittenberg. There he acquired the academic degree of licentiate on June 17, 1533 in a disputation on Melanchthon's theses . On the following day, June 18, he was awarded a doctorate in theology in a solemn act together with Johannes Bugenhagen and Caspar Cruciger . The elector Johann Friedrich von Sachsen had reimbursed the doctoral costs and, like Martin Luther, attended the solemn act, which was followed by a feast in the castle of Wittenberg .

In the years that followed, Aepinus played a key role in the important decisions that had to be made for state and church. He soon emerged on questions of faith and doctrine within the entire Lutheran Church in Germany. In the city of Hamburg, his negotiating skills were repeatedly used by the council. The dispute with the cathedral chapter still continued and could not be resolved. On July 7, 1533, the Imperial Chamber Court issued a judgment against the city of Hamburg, which confirmed the imperial penal mandate from 1528. The resulting situation led to Hamburg joining the Schmalkaldic League on January 25, 1536 .

Aepinus traveled with a delegation from the City Council of Hamburg to the court of Henry VIII of England , where he took part in negotiations on matters relating to the king's divorce and the reorganization of church conditions in England . Aepinus, however, refused Henry VIII the hoped-for positive theological opinion on the divorce and had to experience that during his stay in the parliamentary negotiations, which then led to the Supreme Act in 1534 , not a word of matters of faith was mentioned. Rather, it was ultimately only about the question of supremacy and the confiscation of church property. Aepinus, who had given Henry VIII two copies of the Apology of the Confessio Augustana , left London disappointed in January 1535.

When he returned to Hamburg, the northern German cities were troubled by the establishment of Anabaptist rule in Munster . Aepinus therefore devoted himself to strengthening the north German churches against the radical Anabaptists. On April 15, 1535, the first Evangelical Synod of Lower Saxony took place in Hamburg, at which the cities of Hamburg, Lübeck , Bremen , Lüneburg , Rostock and Stralsund were represented. It was decided not to allow preachers to sit on the pulpit who had not been tested according to the Augsburg Confession and the Apology and who had signed a commitment to only preach the Lutheran doctrine. After arrest and embarrassing interrogation, some Anabaptists were punished by expulsion from the city at the intercession of the preachers.

In February 1537, the Protestant representatives at the Bundestag in Schmalkalden discussed their possible participation in the Pope Paul III. Council announced for May 1537 in Mantua . Aepinus took part in the negotiations and signed the Schmalkaldic Articles and the Tractatus de potestate et primatu papae for Hamburg .

Aepinus also wrote a new church ordinance for Hamburg in 1539, since Bugenhagen's first church ordinance had practical problems. However, since there were differences of opinion with the city council regarding this elaborated church ordinance, it was not enforced. Aepinus also worked out a church ordinance for the Bergedorf office , which came into force in 1544. In 1552 Buxtehude received a church ordinance that had also been drawn up by Aepinus.

In the following years, Aepinus was always consulted by his evangelical fellow believers in theological questions and the political strategies that followed from them. When in Braunschweig in 1538 and later in Hamburg in the presence of King Christian III. was negotiated by Denmark , Aepinus was involved in averting the impending danger of war that had arisen through the establishment of the Nuremberg League . In 1546, however, after the unsuccessful Regensburg Religious Discussion, the Schmalkaldic War broke out . In 1552 Aepinus made trips to Copenhagen , Rostock and Lübeck , where the advice of the Hamburg superintendent on church and theological questions was sought after.

Aepinus died on May 13, 1553 and was buried in front of the altar of the St. Peter's Church.

Working as a theologian

When Aepinus became chief pastor in Hamburg, the city had 15,000 to 20,000 inhabitants. In four parishes 80 services were held weekly, which were held alternately by himself and the other pastors and chaplains. Aepinus had been preaching at St. Peter's Church since 1534, and when he took over as superintendent, he had access to all of the city's pulpits, from which he preached especially on the cathedral pulpit. In his sermons and writings he commented on practical theological questions: the form of church marriage, church discipline and how "ungodly people are to be buried with Christian psalms and chants that they despised in life". As a lecturer at the cathedral, he regularly gave lectures for scholars and preachers in Latin.

Aepinus' interpretations of the Psalms (1544) became known, for which the interpretation of the 16th Psalm gained particular publicity due to the ensuing dispute over the doctrine of Christ's descent into hell within the history of dogma and which for a long time also belonged to the iconographic program of Christian art. His opponents argued that the reformer had already presented the common dogmatic conception of the journey to hell in a sermon in Torgau in 1533 , without, however, commenting on "how such things may have happened". In 1548 a dispute began in Hamburg pastors, which resulted in excessive polemics and mutual hereticism. The city council intervened and in 1550 asked Melanchthon for an expert opinion, which was drafted with the greatest caution and mildness and demanded that the public discussion of the contentious article from the pulpit should cease. When the opponents of Aepinus did not rest, they were appalled by the council of their offices and expelled from Hamburg. The unfortunate dispute found an aftermath in the imperial instructions for the Augsburg Reichstag in 1555, which spoke of a new sect that had arisen in Hamburg, which had arisen over the dispute about Christ's descent into hell and which were put on an equal footing with the sacramenters, iconoclasts and others . Aepinus based his doctrine of the journey into hell, which he modified in the course of the dispute, on a consequently thought- through satisfaction theory , whereby Christ's power was only thought of as being hidden, not lost. Lutheranism did not follow the ideas of the Hamburg superintendent of Christ's descent into hell, which show a closer connection to the medieval worldview than is the case with Luther.

Hamburg was drawn into the defeat of the Schmalkaldic League. Again Aepinus stood by the city council. The superintendent advised peace without giving up the cause of the Reformation: “It is therefore necessary that we should rather lose everything that is ours and remain in the correct confession of the truth than that, for the sake of this gain in time, we start something against us Conscience and the bliss of our souls ”. The decisive resistance to the Augsburg Interim resulting from the political events came from northern Germany. When Lutheran theologians from Hamburg, Lübeck and Lüneburg met in Mölln , Aepinus was entrusted with writing a reply. In this writing (1548) he refutes the Augsburg Interim point by point. Melanchthon called it the best that had been written on the matter. Matthias Flacius made a similar statement . Following the Leipzig article , a dispute arose over the Catholic ceremonies and customs allowed therein. Aepinus, who with his letter to the Wittenberg theologians in 1549 raised an objection to the view of Melanchthon and, together with Joachim Westphal, advocated the necessary preservation of a strict Lutheran standpoint, found its doctrinal expression in the formula of the Concord and thus stood on the side of the Gnesiolutherans , without to throw up with Melanchthon.

In the theological controversies caused by Andreas Osiander's account of the relationship between justification and sanctification, Aepinus intervened at the instigation of Duke Albrecht I of Brandenburg-Ansbach with a work written by him and Joachim Westphal (1552).

Aftermath

In 1719, Valentin Ernst Löscher summarized his judgment on Aepinus in the sentence: "A great man in his time, and one of the best and most loyal tools of the Reformation". Aepinus energetically helped to preserve the doctrine of justification and the sacraments as the center of Lutheran theology in relation to the Roman church and all internal evangelical deviations. His theological writings, to which the Catholic side also accorded importance, underline his work for the church-political Reformation. His unwavering adherence to the foundations of the Lutheran church and theology was always characterized by prudence in judgment and personal mildness and show the picture of the theological disputes which Aepinus had to lead and which had an impact on the confession of the Lutheran church.

His activities in the organization of the church are of lasting importance. The Stralsund church ordinance of 1525, which he wrote, shows how much Aepinus had in mind the whole of public life, which was to be determined by Christian faith. The core and center of all orderly action was the Lutheran teaching based on the right understanding of law and gospel. They were to shape not only the church system, but also the school system, which was intended for boys and girls, for rich and poor. This, in the broadest sense, social character of the church ordinances is also evident in the regulations for the welfare of the poor and the sick, for the pastoral care of prisoners and in the instructions for the care of old monks and priests.

Through his work, Aepinus set a standard for the office of superintendent and his episcopal character. Aepinus performed this task vis-à-vis the cathedral chapter, the council and the brothers in office. When the office of bishop was introduced in the Hamburg regional church in 1933 , it was aware that it would be linked to the office of superintendent provided for by Bugenhagen's church regulations. Because of his work within the Hamburg church, which encompasses all areas of ecclesiastical life, E. Vogelsang was even able to come to the conclusion that Aepinus was the “real reformer of Hamburg” without diminishing Bugenhagen's earnings.

iconography

In Hamburg there is a painting by an unknown painter from the 16th century in the St. Jacobi Church. There is also a painting from the 17th century by an also unknown master in the sacristy of St. Peter's Church.

A copper engraving by Christian Fritzsch is also known, which is reproduced by Staphorst. Johann Magdeburgius wrote an epitaph with his portrait (Hamburg 1553). Another portrait, presumably by Balthasar Mentz , is in the picture collection of the Protestant seminary of Lutherstadt Wittenberg.

A presumed depiction on the epitaph portrait for Paul Eber "The Lord's Vineyard" in the city ​​church of Lutherstadt Wittenberg shows a certain similarity to Aepinus. However, the person shown is currently assigned to Georg Major .

genealogy

Aepinus was married twice, his first wife died in childbed in 1549, her name and that of his second wife are not known. Aepinus left several children, including the lawyer Friedrich Aepinus . Among his descendants are well-known theologians and lawyers, as well as the well-known mathematician and physicist Franz Ulrich Theodor Aepinus (1724–1802).

Fonts

  • Pinacidion de Romanae ecclesiae imposturis . Hamburg 1530
  • A korte Underwysinge van deme Sacramente des Lyves unde des Blodes Christi ... Hamburg 1530
  • Benkentniss [!] And declaration on interim by the Erbarn Stedte Lübeck, Hamburg, Lüneburg etc. superintendents, pastors and preachers placed on Christian and necessary support. Magdeburg, [approx. 1548], A 356 in VD 16 . ( Digitized version )
  • De justificatione hominis . (Frankf. 1551)
  • Responsio ad confessionem Andreae Osiandri . 1552
  • De rebus adiaphoris epistola… 1549
  • Responsio Ministrorum ... 1552
  • Formula desponsationis ...

literature

Web links

Commons : Johannes Aepinus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See alsoersch-Gruber II, p. 59.
personal data
SURNAME Aepinus, Johannes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Johann Hoeck; Johann Hugk; Johannes Äpinus; Johannes Hoeck
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian and reformer
DATE OF BIRTH 1499
PLACE OF BIRTH Ziesar
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1553
Place of death Hamburg