Nikolaus Beuck

Memorial plaque for the Beuck family in the collegiate church of St. Arnual

Nikolaus Beuck (* around 1523 in Saarbrücken , † around 1572 in Vinstingen, today Fénétrange / Lothringen ; also Beuckius , Bayk , Beick ) was a Protestant - Lutheran theologian and reformer .

Life and effect

Nikolaus Beuck came from a respected and wealthy bourgeois family from Saarbrücken. This is indicated by the fact that the family owned a hereditary burial in the Saarbrücken collegiate church of St. Arnual , which is still preserved today. His father was called Hans Beuck, his mother Barbara.

In 1539 Beuck began studying Catholic theology in Heidelberg , which he apparently completed in 1546. Since he had studied on a scholarship from the Count of Saarbrücken , he was also given permission to be ordained a priest as a child of the state. By 1551 at the latest, he was a member of the important St. Arnual Abbey as canon and soon afterwards he must have become dean (in this case comparable to an abbot ) of the abbey. In this capacity he was one of the county's leading figures.

Count Philip II of Nassau-Saarbrücken was Catholic , but did not prevent Protestant preachers from working in some places in his country . The St. Arnualer Stift also showed tendencies to join the Reformation : The canons thought about the abolition of celibacy and the introduction of the lay chalice . Since Count Philipp hesitated further and his brother, Johann III. , continued in this policy, Beuck finally gave up his office in 1555.

He changed to the nearby Forbach as court preacher , where he carried out the Reformation. But Count Johann von Hohenfels-Reipoltskirchen , to whom Forbach belonged, could not maintain this procedure before the Duke of Lorraine , his liege lord , and had to dismiss Beuck again in 1557.

Beuck was the first superintendent to move to Simmern , where the Palatinate Duke Friedrich II of Palatinate-Simmern introduced the Reformation according to the Lutheran confession in the same year . Here he married Barbara Usinger from Kirn in 1558 , with whom he had at least three children. In 1558/59 Beuck introduced the Reformation in the rear county of Sponheim .

In 1565 Beuck left Simmern and became superintendent of the County of Vinstingen , which at that time belonged to the Wild and Rhine Counts . Here, too, he introduced the Reformation according to the Lutheran creed. He died here in 1571 or 1572 (the date is unknown, but a letter from his widow has survived from 1572, demanding that the count pay the arrears of her husband's salary).

literature

• Joachim Conrad:  Beuck, Nikolaus. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 23, Bautz, Nordhausen 2004, ISBN 3-88309-155-3 , Sp. 90-92.

Web links

• Nikolaus Beuck in the Saarland biographies