Johannes Cluto

Johannes (Jan) Cluto (Cluton) (* around 1600 in Emden ; † December 6, 1658 ibid) was a German university lecturer and councilor.

Life and work in Franeker

According to an entry in the registry of the University of Leiden on September 30, 1620, Cluto was born around 1600. He probably went to school in his native Emden. His entry as a freshman at the theological faculty of the Bremen Gymnasium illustrious dates to October 21, 1619. With a “stud. phil. Johannes Cluto ”, which the East Frisian student union of Groningen has with an entry from October 1, 1611, was obviously another family member.

According to the register, Cluto moved from the University of Leiden to Franeker on August 24, 1623 as a theology student . According to a source, he attended the University of Königsberg in 1620 . A person with this name enrolled there on July 10, 1620, where the semester, however, ended a little later on August 6. The Cluto described here, on the other hand, enrolled at Leiden University on September 30, 1620. The matriculation entry in Königsberg is therefore most likely to be attributed to another person. In Franeker, Cluto heard from Amesius and especially from Maccovius . He probably also attended lectures by Schotanus. Maccovius subjected him to two disputations in 1624 and 1625 and received his doctorate on March 14, 1633 as a doctor of theology. The exact date of the doctorate has not been clarified. One source cites May 14, 1634, another source refers to it under the same date as “Disp. theol. inaug., promoter Maccovius (not proven) ”. Emo Lucius Vriemoet noted: “Anno 1633 dies XIV. Martii creatus S. Theol. Doctor, publice et solemniter in Templo Acad… ”Accordingly, Cluto probably held his inaugural address as a private lecturer on May 14, 1634. Other authors refer to him as such from 1634 to 1636. This would agree with sources according to which he did not stay in Franeker for a short time after receiving his doctorate in 1633.

The Academic Senate and the faculty curators commissioned Cluto from 1634 to hold public disputations and private lectures, which gave young students exercise opportunities. This resulted in the “Ideae theologiae disputatio I-XLV” in April 1636, which comprised 45 disputations. A reprint of this was published in December 1636. Cluto added another disputation to the work, which went to print in 1636 as "Idea S. theologiae exemplar sanorum ...". In 1656 there was a second edition of the book.

In December 1636, the University of Franeker appointed Cluto to an associate professor in theology. On March 15, 1637, she offered him an honorary salary of 400 guilders. Since Cluto did not immediately accept the offer, the university increased the offer by a further 1,400 guilders on August 23, but could not convince him. It is not known why he was not given a full professorship. From the dedication of the “Ideae theologiae disputatio I-XLV” it can be seen that he had obviously figured out great opportunities for this. When he returned to Franeker in 1633, he had already written to a son of Johannes Saeckmas that he had been given hope. Since these were not fulfilled, Cluto returned to Emden in 1637 out of disappointment.

Change to Emden

More than 100 years after Cluto left Franeker, Emo Lucius Vriemoet considered it a mistake that the university had failed to persuade him to stay. Vriemont described him as a small, well-educated man with precise knowledge, youthful and with great ambitions. A letter from Professor Menelaus Winsemius to Saeckma on July 11, 1636 indicates that Cluto enjoyed a high reputation among professors and students. The students campaigned for him to receive a professorship. Another reason for Cluto's move to Emden could have been that he was paid better here. This assumption is based on the fact that Cluto wrote there against Michael Walther in 1638 "Bad and just explanations ...", which comprised 747 pages and was widely used. Walther had previously worked here as a theologian and in 1626 moved to Aurich , a few kilometers northeast .

Walther wrote a new church ordinance at his place of work in Aurich and decreed that Lutheran congregations should be visited for the first time . He argued permanently with the Reformed and did not want to grant them the membership of the Augsburg confession as laid down in the Emden Concordat . In the parish of Völlen , too, disputes between Reformed and Lutherans ruled for decades. Here the conflict escalated, whereupon the community asked Walther for a pamphlet, which Walther completed in 1632 on the question of the Lord's Supper . In it he explained how the words of the institution were to be understood. Cluto responded with a work from 1638, stating that these words had to be interpreted in their improper, fuzzy (figurative) meaning. Walther responded to this in 1641 with another treatise. After that, the dispute was no longer carried out in public.

Cluto took on several honorary posts in Emden. In 1642 he entered the college of forties. From 1646 until the end of his life he was councilor and as such from 1649 to 1653 ammunition and artillery master of the city.

Cluto was married to Sarcke Nyenborchs since April 1641. The couple had a foster daughter named Gertje Mennen .

literature

• Harro Buß: Cluto, Johannes. In: Martin Tielke (Hrsg.): Biographisches Lexikon für Ostfriesland . Ostfriesische Landschaftliche Verlags- und Vertriebsgesellschaft, Aurich 2001, Vol. 3 ISBN 3-932206-22-3 , pages 90-93.
• Christian Gottlieb Jöcher: General scholar-lexicon. Volume 1, 1750, p.1973
• East Frisian history: from 1611 to 1648, volume 4, p.333

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Emden 1490-1749: Sources inventory of the first registry of the city archive Emden, Volume 2, p. 593