Petrus Canisius

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Petrus Canisius
Petrus Canisius on an engraving from around 1600
Petrus Canisius on an engraving from around 1600
Born May 8, 1521 ( Nijmegen , Duchy of Geldern )
Deceased December 21, 1597 ( Friborg , Switzerland )
beatification 1864 by Pius IX.
canonization 1925 by Pius XI.
Attributes Skull, crucifix , catechism
Holiday

Catholic:

Petrus Canisius , also Petrus Kanisius , Latinized from Pieter Kanijs , also P. Kanîs (* May 8, 1521 in Nijmegen , Duchy of Geldern ; † December 21, 1597 in Freiburg im Üechtland , Switzerland ), was a theologian and writer , one of the first German Jesuits and influential spiritual and political champions of the Counter Reformation . The first Catholic catechisms go back to him. The Catholic Church considers Petrus Canisius to be Germany's second apostle, saint and doctor of the church after Boniface .

Surname

The opinion still held by some authors today that the Nijmegic surname Kanis or Canis is derived from (de) Hondt (= dog) or even Hontjes (= dogs) has been refuted. As early as 1611, the Jesuit Jan Buys or Busaeus wrote from Nijmegen that the name Canis could not be derived from the German word Hundt, although the coat of arms carries a dog. The name appears in the Nijmegen files only as Kanis, Canis, Kanijs or Kanees, sometimes Latinized to Canisius or Kanisius.

Life

Petrus Canisius was the son of the mayor of Nijmegen . The place of birth Nijmegen was in the Diocese of Cologne and in the Holy Roman Empire . On the day of his birth was Martin Luther in Worms , the imperial ban imposed.

On May 8, 1543, at the age of 22, Petrus Canisius joined the order of the Jesuits, which had only been founded a few years earlier . As the eighth member of the young Societas Jesu , he made his vows in the rectory of St. Christoph in Mainz. Later, Canisius was the first German religious provincial (1556–1569) to lay the foundation for the Jesuits to have a decisive influence on the Counter-Reformation in Germany.

In January 1547, the Bishop of Augsburg, Cardinal Otto Truchsess von Waldburg , called Canisius to the Council of Trento . Around this time he began to use the Latinized form of his name.

Death room of Petrus Canisius in the college of St-Michael (Freiburg im Uechtland)

Canisius was rector and professor of theology at the University of Ingolstadt and was one of the first Jesuits to be summoned to Vienna from 1552 to promote the Counter-Reformation. In Vienna he rebuilt the depressed Catholic faculty, was a successful preacher and, with the support of Ferdinand I, founded the first Jesuit college in the German-speaking area, which was one of the most important instruments of the Counter-Reformation. He refused the office of bishop , he accepted the appointment as administrator of the diocese of Vienna for the years 1554 to 1555 and was also active as cathedral preacher. Perhaps his most important achievement in Vienna was the writing of the first Catholic catechism , which remained a successful book for centuries. The "Kanisi" was synonymous with the catechism in the German-speaking world until the 20th century.

In February 1556 Canisius preached in the overcrowded St. Stephen's Cathedral and introduced the new cathedral master builder Hans Saphoy into his office. As a result, holding Lutheran services in private town houses and in the Vienna City Hall was strictly forbidden.

Canisius developed a lively activity in southern Germany. Both Emperor Ferdinand I and Pope Gregory XIII. entrusted him with church politics. From 1559 to 1566 he was cathedral preacher in Augsburg .

Petrus Canisius created respect for himself through his reserved manner in dealing with the reformers, never speaking of heretics or heresy, but rather cautiously of "new teachers" and "new doctrines". However, he denounced church grievances sharply and clearly. His catechism, which appeared in 1555 under the title Summa doctrinae christianae , was intended as an answer to Luther's Great Catechism and was reprinted 200 times during his lifetime and introduced into the schools of his sphere of influence from 1591 by the Augsburg prince-bishop Johann Otto von Gemmingen .

Nonetheless, Canisius was an advocate of the persecution of witches . In his Augsburg sermons he blamed witches for storms and bad harvests and accused them of child murder and cannibalism , among other things . This contributed to a change of mood in favor of the proponents of persecution in Augsburg, which was previously more cosmopolitan and humanistic . Wolfgang Behringer sees Canisius' sermons in the 1560s as one of the reasons for the new outbreak of the witch craze in Central Europe after a latency period of two generations.

Petrus Canisius in Innsbruck Cathedral
The church named after him in Vienna as seen from Canisiusgasse

In the last years of his life, Canisius founded the College of St. Michael in 1580 in Friborg, Switzerland . After his death, Petrus Canisius was buried in the Freiburg University Church of St. Michael .

The canon lawyer and historian Heinrich Canisius († 1610 in Ingolstadt ) was his nephew.

Works

  • Kölner Taulerdruck (as publisher), 1543 (see Meister Eckhart )
  • Summa doctrinae christianae […]. 1555
  • Catechism minimus ( Small Catechism ), 1556; univie.ac.at ( Memento from July 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (German)
  • Parvus catechismus catholicorum , 1558
  • Brief epitome of Christian doctrine, edition 1826 and Catechism of the Christian Catholic religion in three sections, edition 1833

Honors and patrons

Bust of Peter Canisius in the Munich Hall of Fame

Canisius was saved in 1864 and in 1925 by Pius XI. canonized and appointed Doctor of the Church . Leo XIII. referred to him in the encyclical Militantis ecclesiae (August 1, 1897) on the 300th anniversary of his death as the "Second Apostle of Germany" after Boniface .

Canisius' bust was placed in the Hall of Fame in Munich.

Canisius is the patron saint of the Catholic school organization in Germany and the Diocese of Innsbruck, which was established in 1964 .

The following institutions, objects and works are named after Canisius:

literature

Web links

Commons : Petrus Canisius  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Petrus Canisius in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints , accessed on March 10, 2013
  2. ↑ Jan Buys SJ to Matthäus Rader SJ, Mainz, on January 3, 1611, in: Otto Braunsberger (Ed.): Beati Petri Canisii Iesu Epistulae et Acta VIII. Friburgi Brisgoviae 1923, pp. 399-400.
  3. ^ Hans Baumann: Dates of the city history of Mainz . In: City of Mainz (ed.): Quarterly books for culture, politics, economy, history. Hermann Schmidt publishing house, Mainz, II / 1993.
  4. ↑ stephanskirche.at.
  5. ^ Archdiocese of Vienna : Petrus Canisius: the man who made Vienna Catholic again. In: erzdioezese-wien.at. May 5, 2021, accessed May 5, 2021 .
  6. ^ Anton Schmid: The beginnings of the cathedral predicatures in the German-speaking dioceses. In: Roman quarterly for Christian antiquity and church history 89 (1994), issue 1–2, pp. 78–110, here p. 99.
  7. ↑ Walter Ansbacher: Faith in witches and the persecution of witches in Western history . Ed .: Episcopal Pastoral Office Augsburg. Department for questions of religion and ideology (=  Weltanschauung . No. 1/2008 ). Augsburg 2008, The New Beginning of the Witch Hunts after the Reformation ( bistum-augsburg.de [PDF; 362 kB ; accessed on March 10, 2013]).
  8. ↑ Wolfgang Behringer: Opinion-forming proponents and opponents of the witch hunt (15th to 18th century) . In: Helfried Valentinitsch (ed.): Witches and magicians . The great persecution - a European phenomenon in Styria. Leykam, Graz 1987, ISBN 3-7011-7184-X , p. 223 ( uni-saarland.de [PDF; 8.5 MB ; accessed on April 5, 2013]).
  9. ↑ herzmariae.blogspot.com.br (German)
  10. ↑ Canisius Prize for high school graduate . In: Augsburger Allgemeine , about the first award ceremony; accessed on August 27, 2017
predecessor Office successor
Christoph Wertwein Administrator of Vienna
1554–1555 		Anton Brus von Müglitz
personal data
SURNAME Canisius, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Canisius, Peter; Kanijs, Petrus; Kanîs, Peter; Hondt, Peter de; Kanijs, Pieter (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch Jesuit, Doctor of the Church and saint
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1521
PLACE OF BIRTH Nijmegen
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1597
PLACE OF DEATH Freiburg im Üechtland , Switzerland