Johannes Arnoldi

Johannes Arnoldi, engraving after a painting from 1631

Johannes Arnoldi (born June 24, 1596 in Warburg , † November 9, 1631 in Visselhövede ) was a German Jesuit priest and martyr .

Life

He grew up in Warburg. In 1616 he joined the Jesuit order and then worked in the margraviate of Baden , on the Lower Rhine and in Westphalia .

As a result of the Edict of Restitution in 1629, the Catholic Bishop Franz Wilhelm von Wartenberg from Osnabrück also took over the bishopric of Verden , founded a Jesuit community there to recatholize the population and, on May 7, 1630, appointed Father Arnoldi as pastor of the parishes of Visselhövede, Neuenkirchen and Schneverdingen . At the same time, the bishop declared all Lutheran pastors deposed, including Johannes Müller from Visselhövede. However, Father Arnoldi's efforts to win the Protestant peasants, who had been Protestant since 1568, back to Catholicism through sermons were largely unsuccessful; he was only able to win over a not-so-respected person to re-enter the Catholic Church. Thereupon the parish of Visselhövede was sentenced by the bishop for disobedience to a penalty of 160 Reichstalers. There was unrest among the rural population, which was intensified by the military successes of the Protestants, including after the Battle of Breitenfeld on September 17, 1631.

On November 9, 1631, Father Arnoldi held mass for the last time in Visselhövede and then set out for Verden. He didn't get there. A group of unknown people stopped him near the intersection of the Verdener Landstrasse and the Nindorf - Kettenburg route . They pulled him from the wagon, beat him, tied him to a tree, and cut his throat.

The demarcation of the crime scene was later called "Paterbusch".

Commemoration

• On November 9, 1931, the 300th anniversary of the death of Father Johannes Arnoldis was celebrated with a commemoration in the Schlosskirche in Kettenburg.
• In 1981 a memorial designed by the Braunschweig sculptor Claus Kilian was erected under the bell tower of the Catholic Church in Visselhövede .
• The Arnoldihaus in Warburg, which was built in 1513 and is the clubhouse of the local Catholic parish of St. Marien , was named after him. A piece of his chasuble is also kept there as a relic and an oil painting made by him shortly after his death.

literature

• Johannes Baptist Metzler : P. Johannes Arnoldi SJ.- martyr of the north German diaspora , Paderborn 1931, OCLC 64958295 .
• Josef Nowak: Johannes Arnoldi. A life for the diaspora , Bernward, Hildesheim 1978, ISBN 3-870-65150-4 .
• Heinrich Hüner : Die Gilkenheide , 1938. As a reprint: Treichel, Visselhövede 2000, ISBN 3-00-006379-X .