Matthias Ritter the Younger

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Matthias Ritter (* 1526 in Eichtersheim ; † March 14, 1588 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German Lutheran theologian and pastor. He came from the theologian family Ritter and was a pastor in Frankfurt from 1552 until his death. Together with Hartmann Beyer , he founded Lutheran orthodoxy in the Frankfurt Church.

life and work

Matthias Ritter was a son of the deacon Matthias Ritter the Elder , who was called to Frankfurt as a preacher in 1533. After the early death of his father, the Frankfurt patricians Philipp Fürstenberger and Justinian von Holzhausen took care of his education. Matthias Ritter the Younger graduated from the Frankfurt Latin School of Jacobus Micyllus and from 1542 studied theology at the University of Wittenberg as a student of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon . In 1546 he became court master at Holzhausen and moved with his sons to the University of Strasbourg , where he met the reformer Martin Bucer . He then traveled through France with his pupils for several years, during which time he attended various universities.

In autumn 1552 he returned to Frankfurt and was first preacher at the Hospital Church , later at the Katharinenkirche and the Barfüßerkirche . At that time, Frankfurt found itself in a difficult foreign policy situation: in order to prevent imperial reprisals and to protect the vital privileges of the Frankfurt fair and the election of the emperor , the Lutheran imperial city, against the opposition of the ministry of preachers and public opinion, accepted the Augsburg interim and the three collegiate churches of St. Bartholomäus , St. Leonhard and Liebfrauen as well as the Dominican monastery , the Carmelite monastery and the Antonite monastery were returned to the Catholic Church. In the prince uprising in 1552, the city had shown itself to be loyal to the emperor and withstood a three-week siege of the Lutheran princes under Moritz von Sachsen . After the Passau Treaty of August 2, 1552, the foreign policy situation for Frankfurt eased, but domestically the dispute between the Council and the Ministry of Preachers escalated. When the council ordered the reintroduction of Easter Monday in 1553 , Beyer and Ritter refused to preach.

After the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the Lutheran confession was finally consolidated in Frankfurt. What followed, however, were the various theological currents that had emerged from the Reformation. From 1554 Calvinist refugees under the leadership of Valérand Poullain and Jan Łaski from England and the Netherlands had settled in Frankfurt. In the Second Supper Controversy, Ritter and Beyer took the side of the Gnesiolutherans and, despite an attempt to mediate by Johannes Calvin , who had come to Frankfurt in 1556 , forced the ban on Reformed worship in Frankfurt in 1561. With Magister Johann Knipius , the rector of the Latin school and supporter of the moderate Lutheran party of the Philippists , Ritter got into such a violent dispute that Knipius left Frankfurt in 1562.

After Beyer's death in 1577, Ritter, the senior and most respected Lutheran clergyman, tried to adopt the formula of concord in Frankfurt in order to end the dispute within Lutheran theology and at the same time make any rapprochement with the Reformed impossible. Although the advice did not follow him in this, he achieved the tacit recognition of the concord formula, which in future had to be signed by all Frankfurt clergy at the ordination . In 1579 Ritter gave the council a renewed church order in Frankfurt , "how it should be kept with the Lord's supper and baptism " and also translated these order into French for the use of the Dutch community.

In 1586 the Ministry of Preachers issued its first convent ordinance . After that, the ministry had to meet every Wednesday. Ritter as the oldest and most respected preacher was to take over the chairmanship, Conrad Lautenbach was to take the minutes.

Ritter died suddenly on March 14, 1588 while meditating on the Passion of Christ . He was married twice: his first marriage to the widow Peter Mayer , in 1554, remained childless. After her death in 1568 he married Elisabeth Struppius geb. Deublinger , the widow of the Sachsenhausen preacher Ulrich Struppius. His older son Mathias studied theology at the University of Marburg , but died there before the exam. The younger son Sebastian Ritter (1579–1609) continued the family tradition. He became a French and German preacher in the Dutch congregation of the Augsburg Confession in Frankfurt. Ritter's stepdaughter Catharina Mayer became the wife of the humanist Johannes Pistorius in 1567 .

Works (excerpt)

  • Vita Lutheri. About the life and death of the venerable Mr. Martini Lutheri etc., translated from Latin into German, again diligently overlooked and improved by Matthiam Ritterum , 1554
  • Counter report and responsibility of the Prädicanten zu Frankfurt am Mayn, on several unfounded complaints of the Welschen . Oberursel 1563 and 1596
  • Dialogus, that is a conversation of the dishonorable and blasphemous judgment of Brother Johann Nasen of Ingolstadt that all Lutheran women are whores , Frankfurt 1570
  • Titul of a faithful warning etc. , Frankfurt 1577
  • Seven and twenty sermons about the Lord's Supper and Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ , Frankfurt at Sigmund Feyerabend 1584. The sermons were written in 1582 on the occasion of a plague epidemic in Frankfurt

An extensive correspondence remained in the archive of the Ministry of Preachers as well as a collection of sources and documents in the personal estate, which his descendant Johann Balthasar Ritter processed in the Church History Evangelical Monument of the City of Frankfurt am Main , published in 1726 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Johann Balthasar Ritter : Evangelical monument of the city of Frankfurt am Main . with Johann Friedrich Fleischern, Frankfurt am Main 1726 ( digital in the Google book search).
  2. ^ Convent regulation of the Ministry of Preachers of May 25, 1586 , printed in: Jürgen Telschow (Ed.), Rechtsquellen zur Frankfurter Kirchengeschichte , Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISSN  0344-3957 , p. 21
  3. ↑ Joh. Balthasar Ritter, Evangelical Monument , p. 431
personal data
SURNAME Ritter, Matthias the Younger
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ritter, Matthias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Lutheran theologian and pastor
DATE OF BIRTH 1526
PLACE OF BIRTH Eichtersheim
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1588
Place of death Frankfurt am Main