Nicholas Decius

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Part of the building of the former Hof Franciscan monastery (today the music hall of the grammar school)

Nikolaus Decius , other forms of name Nikolaus Tech, Tecius, Degius, Deeg, Teach, Hovesch, a Curia (* around 1485 in Hof (Saale) ; † after 1546) was a German monk , pastor , cantor , hymn poet and Prussian reformer .

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Decius attended the Latin School of the Franciscans in his hometown and enrolled at the University of Leipzig in 1501 . After acquiring the Baccalaureus artium in 1506, he became a Benedictine monk . From 1515 he worked as a preacher at the monastery in Braunschweig and from 1519 to 1522 as a preacher at the Augustinian convent in Steterburg in Salzgitter . Subsequently he became city schoolmaster in Hanover and for a short time he returned to Braunschweig as a teacher at the Aegidi School. During his ministerial days he wrote a book of edification in Low German and liturgical Low German hymns.

In the winter semester of 1523/24 he went to Wittenberg to study theology under Martin Luther , whose ideas he was gripped by. On Luther's advice, he accepted a call from Duke Bogislaw of Pomerania to Stettin as a preacher. Here he helped Paul vom Rode to introduce the Reformation until 1527 .

Then he went to East Prussia . He became a deacon in Liebstadt , then a teacher at the Latin school in Bartenstein . In 1534 he became a deacon in Mühlhausen, East Prussia, and looked after displaced Dutch refugees who settled there because of their Reformed faith; he was influenced by reformed ideas. In 1540 Albrecht I of Brandenburg-Ansbach appointed him to Königsberg as court preacher and sub-cantor. In 1543 he went back to Mühlhausen as a pastor . In 1546 he left the place, then his trail is lost.

It is noticeable that Luther no longer mentions Decius after he left Wittenberg and that Decius' songs are missing from Luther's printed collections. Decius' tendency towards Zwinglianism is believed to be a possible reason .

To his legacy include hymns that today in the Protestant hymnal are. They belong to the earliest creations of the evangelical church and should replace the Latin liturgical elements of the Gloria , Sanctus and Agnus Dei of the Roman mass . Even today, “ Honor to God alone on high ” and “ O Lamb of God, innocently slaughtered on the trunk of the cross ” are not only widespread in the context of the evangelical liturgy of worship . The chorale “O Lamb of God innocent ...” can be found in a revised form in the opening double choir of the St. Matthew Passion by JS Bach .

Works

  • Glory to God alone on high ( EG 179, GL 170)
  • O Lamb of God innocently slaughtered on the trunk of the cross (EG 190.1; GL 203)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b Werner Merten: Decius, Nikolaus . In: Wolfgang Herbst (ed.): Who is who in the hymnal? , Göttingen 2001, pp. 73f .; similar to Siegfried Fornaçon in the NDB article
  2. ^ The hymns of Hofer Nicolaus Decius , In: Ludger Stühlmeyer, Curia sonans p. 135ff.