Josephus adjutus

Josephus Adjutus on an engraving from 1647

Josephus Adjutus (* 1602 probably in Mosul ; † May 21, 1668 in Wittenberg ) was initially a Franciscan conventual , then a Protestant convert and language teacher in Wittenberg, who emerged with controversial theological and political writings.

biography

Josephus Adjutus referred to the city of Nineveh as his place of birth , by which he probably meant the city of Mosul in what is now Iraq in the 17th century . Apparently coming from a Chaldean Catholic family , relatives sent him to Jerusalem to be educated at the age of four after the death of his parents . He was educated in Palestine until the age of 11 and then came to Naples , where he entered the convent of the Minorites and took the religious name of Hugo Maria . After continued studies he became a deacon and in 1632 by Basile Cacace, the Titular Archbishop of Ephesus , for priests ordained. After three years of studying at the Collegium Bononiense in Bologna , in 1637 the Franciscan Minister General Giovanni Battista Berardicelli awarded him the degree of Doctor of Theology .

According to his own report, Adjutus headed the Franciscan convent at St. Jakob in Prague , where he wanted to take disciplinary measures when he evaded an order from Provincial Minister Ferdinand Welguber to return to Italy, which was perceived as unfair, and fled first to Dresden, then to Wittenberg he praised as "New Jerusalem".

After he had already been accepted into the university there on June 9, 1643, a few months later he held an Oratio revocatoria in Leucorea in which he declared his departure from the Roman Church, against which he made the usual Lutheran reproaches: contempt for the saints Scripture, resulting errors in doctrine and various reprehensible behaviors such as the tyranny of their church princes.

A defector from the Franciscan order, even a doctorate in Catholic theologian, was a spectacular case that also came in very handy for the Saxon court. In 1645, Elector Johann Georg first procured him a benefice and in 1646 an extraordinary professorship for the Italian language in Wittenberg, endowed with 50 guilders and an official apartment. In 1647 Adjutus married Blandina Schröder († 1680), widowed Cotta, and had a son with her named Johannes. According to the Wittenberg sources, Adjutus also worked as an innkeeper who served an extraordinary amount of wine and brewed his own beer.

As a language teacher, Adjutus does not seem to have stood out particularly. A major speech on the origin and development of the Latin to Italian language, to which the Wittenberg academic audience was invited in 1647, did not appear in print. In addition to the published writings, its importance lies above all in his extraordinary biography, which proves Wittenberg's attraction even in the 17th century.

Works

The first writings published in Wittenberg are speeches that opposed his earlier Catholic faith, later he published reflections on politics:

• Oratio Revocatoria , Wittenberg 1643
• Oratio De Certitudine Gratiae , Wittenberg 1645
• Oratio De Potestate Romani Episcopi , Wittenberg 1646
• Speculum […] De Hodiernorum Monachorum Votis , Wittenberg 1650
• Axiomata Politica, Unde Industrius Studiosus Prudentiam Atque Varia Politicorum Arcana Ad Rationem Status Et Regiminis Pertinentia Consequetur Facile , Wittenberg 1656
• Tractatus Politicus De Clementia Et Regimine Boni Principis , Wittenberg 1664

literature

• Conrad Victor Schneider , Rector Academiae […] Civibus Academicis SPD [announcement of his death with biography], s. 1., 1668. All articles in the lexicon go back, more or less distorted, to the article by Brentjes.
• Burchard Brentjes : Josephus Adjutus, the Chaldeans of Wittenberg . In: Scientific journal of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, social and linguistic series, Volume 26, 1977, Issue 4, pp. 131-138.
• Heinrich Kühne : Wittenberg with Josephus Adjutus. New research results from the Wittenberg archives . In: Scientific journal of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, social and linguistic series, Volume 28, 1979, Issue 4, pp. 133-134.

Web links

• Publications by and about Josephus Adjutus in VD 17 .
• Handwriting sample

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Speculum (see works), pp. [28] and [49].
2. ↑ Speculum (see works), pp. [47] - [49].
3. ^ Kühne, Wittenbergisches (see literature).
4. ↑ See August Buchner , Invitatio ad Josephi Adjuti orationem de lingua Italica. In: Dissertationes academicae sive programmata, Frankfurt am Main, 1679, No. 181, pp. 174–176.