Martin Donk

Martin Donk , lat. Martinus Duncanus (born November 10, 1506 in Kempen , † April 16, 1590 in Amersfoort ) was a Catholic pastor and a staunch opponent of the Reformation .

Life

Martin Donk from Kempen

Martin Donk was born on the Donkhof near Kempen and attended the Latin school in Kempen at the instigation of his mother. The father wanted nothing to do with his son's studies and apprenticed him to a potter. When the young Donk was 13 years old, he left his parents' house with the consent of his mother, but without the knowledge of his father, and went to Nijmegen in the Netherlands . There he earned his living by giving private tuition until he was finally accepted into life together in a house of the brothers and was able to study rhetoric and dialectic there. In the fall of 1529 he moved to the university town of Leuven . Here he won the favor of the Chancellor of the local university , Professor Ruard Tapper , and, on his recommendation, was accepted into the college founded and headed by Professor Johannes Standonk. After two years of university studies, Donk passed the examination of a magister artium , whereupon he received the sub-rain position in the Standonkhaus. He now had to take care of the administration of the house, leaving enough time to study theology. In 1534 Donk was appointed head of the Standonk House in Mechelen and was ordained a priest in 1536. He celebrated his first class in Kempen. After returning from his homeland, Donk stayed in Mechelen for two years until he was called back as head of the Standonk House in Leuven, where he continued his theological studies at the university. He passed the baccalaureate exam. In 1541 he was appointed pastor of Wormer near Amsterdam on the recommendation of Professor Tapper . There Donk was faced with a difficult task. As everywhere in the Netherlands, Luther's teaching had spread in Wormer . He founded a Latin school there. The number of students grew quickly and he hired two assistant teachers. To promote teaching, he wrote a manual for the Latin language, which had two editions within six years. His sermons were directed against the Anabaptists . He worked out a refutation of their teachings that appeared in 1549. Donk stayed in Wormer until the summer of 1558, when he was appointed pastor of the Hippolytus Church in Delft . There he should continue to work as an expert against the doctrine of the Anabaptists and against their strong following. But already in the first years of his Delft activity a new development became apparent. The followers of Calvin gained increasing influence in the Netherlands, both religiously and politically. Donk worked in Delft until 1572 and was then called to The Hague as dean and councilor of the royal court . There he got caught up in the maelstrom of political events and in the same year went to Utrecht via Rotterdam . In September he was called to pastor of the New Church in Amsterdam. Here he worked for six years, until on May 26, 1578 a riot broke out against the Catholic magistrate of the city and Donk and other priests were expelled from the city. Donk spent the last 12 years of his life in Amersfoort , a refuge for exiled Catholics. He lived there like a hermit. As the fruit of his studies, a treatise on the mass as a Eucharistic sacrifice appeared in 1580 . His last work was the Catholijke Catechism, an opposition to the Heidelberg Catechism of the Reformed, which only appeared after his death in 1594. Martin Donk left a total of 23 writings.

Works

• Anabaptisticae haereseos confutatio. Antwerp 1549. Digitized version of the Bavarian State Library in Munich.
• Praetextatae Latinè loquendi rationis per Colloquiorum formulas. Antwerp 1552, 2nd edition 1558. Digitized version of the Bavarian State Library in Munich.
• Vant right Evangelisse avontmael Christi Jesus. Antwerp 1567, 2nd edition 1583.
• Van het nieuwe sacrificium des Christendom, dwhich is het Lam Godts. Antwerp 1580.
• Catholijcke catechism, met neither legginghe van der Heydelbergsche often ghereformeerde catechism met vraghe ende answers. Antwerp 1594.

literature

• Jacob Cornelis van Slee :  Duncanus, Martinus . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 466 f.
• Gerhard Terwelp: The city of Kempen in the Rhineland. 1st part Festschrift for the 600th anniversary celebration. Kempen (Rhein) 1894, pp. 168-176.
• Felix Rütten : Martin Donk (Martinus Duncanus) 1505-1590. Aschendorff, Münster 1906.
• Hans Simons: Martin Donk from Kempen. In: Heimatbuch des Kreis Kempen-Krefeld. 23rd Volume 1972, pp. 231-236.
• Erhard Louven: Martin Donk in the denominational disputes of his time. In: Home book of the district of Viersen. 65th Volume 2014, pp. 51-62.

Web links

• Website of the city of Kempen: Donkring