Petrus Vincentius

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Petrus Vincentius, 1563

Petrus Vincentius ( Latinized from Peter Vietz ; born March 1, 1519 in Breslau ; † October 1, 1581 ibid) was a German rhetorician , ethicist and educator .

Life

Born as the son of goldsmith Martin Vitze, Vincentius began studying in 1538 at the University of Wittenberg , where Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon were his teachers. When he had completed his studies with the graduation of a master's degree on January 25, 1543, he went to Nuremberg , where he became a teacher at the Lorenz School. On the recommendation of Johannes Bugenhagen , he was appointed professor at the University of Greifswald in 1546 . In the same year he also took over the rectorate alongside Michael Beuther . On July 18, 1547 he married Hedwig here, from Olomouc in Moravia († before 1574).

Lübeck

At the beginning of the summer semester of 1549 Vincentius was dismissed at his own request and came to the Katharineum in Lübeck as a teacher , probably with the prospect of succeeding Rector Matthias Brassanus after his death. On November 4, 1552 he was appointed rector. Vincentius quickly gained such a reputation with the city council of Lübeck that he was used as the companion of the mayor Hermann Falke in diplomatic missions to England, where he saw the death of Edward VI. experienced.

In addition to teaching and related publications, Vincentius' main work of the Lübeck period was his city ​​praise of 215 elegiac distiches in Latin, which he wrote as an accompanying text for the large city view , a monumental woodcut 3.4 m long and 73 cm high by Elias Diebel, and lectured as the inaugural lecture on November 8, 1552. It has been reprinted many times, first by David Chyträus in Rostock . Zacharias Orth later used it as a template for a similar city praise on Stralsund , and Nikolaus von Reusner praised it as exemplary.

Vincentius chose a similar form of the elegiac poem of over 500 verses for the poem Vera nobilitas ( printed in Rostock by Ludwig Dietz in 1553 ), a homage to Duke Johann Albrecht I of Mecklenburg , whom he praised as the ideal type of true nobility.

His friendship with the superintendent Valentin Curtius did not prevent Vincentius from being drawn into the theological disputes of the time in which he stood on the side of his teacher Melanchthon, while Curtius leaned towards the Gnesiolutherans . While Melanchthon was able to send Vincentius his report against Osiander in the Osiander dispute in the hope of also having the Lübeck Spiritual Ministry on his side, only a few years later the fronts were so hardened that the disputes with the Gnesiolutherans, combined with health problems, Vincentius in such a way that he asked to be dismissed from the office of rector in 1557. It can be assumed that this farewell was due to the failure of a mediation attempt by the Ministry Tripolitanum (the clergy of the cities of Hamburg, Lübeck and Lüneburg) between the supporters of Matthias Flacius and Melanchthon in the same year.

Wittenberg

Vincentius returned to Wittenberg as a “martyr of melanchthonism” , where he took over the professorship for rhetoric and Greek from the late Anton Walther and based his lectures on Melanchthon's methodology.

In 1558 he was given the office of dean of the artist faculty . In this function, he gave the university's commemorative speech for Johannes Bugenhagen that same year . At the end of 1560, he took over the rectorate of the university, which changes semesters . After he took over his professorship for ethics after Melanchthon's death in 1560, in 1561 he also swapped the professorship of eloquence with a professorship for dialectics . During this time he gave lectures on the Greek and Latin classics and also included the philosophy of law in his remarks, since he considered knowledge of law to be necessary for everyone. As the curator of Melanchthon's estate, he made a living by publishing his epigrams in 1563, which came out in 6 volumes and had four editions in a short time.

Goerlitz

However, Vincentius did not find a permanent home in Wittenberg, as he made himself suspicious of Caspar Peucer and his followers with his views close to Melanchthon , who even accused him of seeking relationships with the Jesuits . He did not want to stay in this environment of suspicion and so in 1565 he accepted the offer of the Görlitz council to set up a high school in the city. Once again he turned from the university to school in order to be influenced by Melanchthon's teaching program in the artes liberales and his pedagogical impetus, to set up a school system in Görlitz that was shaped by humanism and reform. In his school and study regulations for the Görlitzer Gymnasium, which appeared in 1566, he processed his long pedagogical experience. But in Görlitz, too, he soon became frustrated. He wrote to his friend Johann Crato von Krafftheim in Breslau that he did not want to live any longer among these "monkeys and meerkats" at any price.

Wroclaw

Due to his success - not least in Görlitz - and his friendship with Crato, he was highly recommended by the Breslau Council in 1569 as Rector at the Elisabet-Gymnasium and at the same time appointed inspector of the Breslau schools. In this function he worked out school regulations for the city of Breslau, making extensive use of the Görlitz work from 1566, thus creating another example of an advanced school system that was also adopted in Silesia for the grammar school in Brieg . The institute built according to his proposals soon flourished and became the secondary school in Silesia. It is said that at the beginning of his time in Wroclaw he was paid 200 marks (annually), plus 2 piles of wood and a free apartment “in a special house”. He was rector until 1578. He was succeeded in this position by Nikolaus Steinberger.

Vincentus Petrus died on October 1st, 1581 in Breslau.

See also

Works

The directory of the 16th century prints published in the German-speaking area (VD 16) lists a total of 74 entries on Peter Vietz / Petrus Vincentius, including:

  • Elegia de origine, incrementis ac laudibus inclytae urbis Lubecae . Rostock 1552
New edition by Johann Henrich von Seelen : Petri Vincentii de origine, incrementis et laudibus Lubecae elegia. Lübeck 1755
Digitized copy of the copy from the Bavarian State Library
  • NARRATIO HISTORICA VICISSITVDINIS, RERVM quae in inclyto Britanniae Regno acciderunt, Anno Domini 1553. Mense Iulio. Wittenberg 1553
  • (German): From the glorious untimely death of Eduardi the Sixth / King to Engelland, etc. Warhafty, thorough report on the story of things and changes, as it happened in the praiseworthy Kingdom of Engelland / Anno Christi 1553. in the month of July. Described / by PV With vleis vnd trewlich brought from Latin into German. Leipzig 1554
  • Oratio de vitarevendi uiri Domini Iohannis Bugenhagij Pomerani, qui fuit Pastor Ecciesiae Dei in oppido Saxoniae Wittenberge. & Lector in Academia anno sex & trigenta, recitta a Petro Vincentio Vratislauiensis., 1558
  • 50 programs in Programmata et alia scripta academiae Wittebergensis Publica from 1557 to 1564 in Wittenberg
  • Oratio de cura loquendi Wittenberg 1557 (inaugural lecture)
  • Oratio de vita reverendi Ioannis Bugenhagii Pomerani Wittenberg 1558 (commemorative speech for Johannes Bugenhagen )
  • Disciplina et doctrina Gymnasii Gorlicensis . Goerlitz 1566
  • The city of Breslaw school order . Wroclaw 1570
  • (Editor) Philipp Melanchthon: Epigrammatum libri sex . Wittenberg 1563 Digitized version of the 1579 edition
  • (posthumous) Historia Bugenhagiana. Vitam Sinceri Theology, ac purioris doctrinae AssertorisB.D. Johannis Bugenhagii, Promerani, Ejusque Merita in Ecclesiam atque Literas, complectens, ad Petri Avtographon rarissimum una cum CL. Aliquot Autorum Judicilis & Relatione Hitorico Harmonica . 1706

literature

  • Denys Hay: The 'Narratio Historica' of Petrus Vincentius, 1553 . In: English Historical Review , Vol. 63, No. 248 (July 1948), pp. 350-356.
  • Hartmut Freytag: Lübeck in city praise and city portrait of the early modern times. About the poem by Petrus Vincentius and Elias Diebel's woodcut from 1552. In: Journal of the Association for Luebeck History and Antiquity , 75, 1995, pp. 137–174.
  • Ders .: Vincentius (Vietz), Petrus (Peter). In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck , ed. on behalf of the Society for Schleswig-Holstein History and the Association for Lübeck History and Archeology, Volume 11, Neumünster 2000, pp. 362–366 as well as illustration on panel 8 (after p. 208).
  • Ders .: Petrus Vincentius (1519–1581) . In: Schlesische Lebensbilder. Edited by the Historical Commission for Silesia, Volume 8. Neustadt an der Aisch 2004, pp. 60–68 and Fig. 5.
  • Adolf Schimmelpfennig :  Vincentius, Petrus . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 39, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1895, p. 736.
  • Wilhelm Wattenbach: Two letters from Petrus Vincentius . In: ZVGSchlesien , 4, 1862, pp. 384–385.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Spring 1543–1549, after Johann Gotfried Ludwig Kosegarten: History of the University of Greifswald. Part 1, reprint, Aalen 1986, p. 197 para. 4.
  2. ^ Adolf Schimmelpfennig, biography of Vincentus Petrus, Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 1895, in: http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd119859033.html
predecessor Office successor
Matthias Brassanus Rector of the Katharineum in Lübeck
1552–1557 		Lorenz Möller
personal data
SURNAME Vincentius, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Peter Vietz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German rhetorician, ethicist and educator
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1519
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH October 1, 1581
Place of death Wroclaw