Salomon Gesner

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Salomon Gesner
Salomon Gesner

Salomon Gesner , sometimes also written Gessner or Geßner, (born November 8, 1559 in Bunzlau , Silesia , †  February 7, 1605 in Wittenberg ) was a German Lutheran theologian of the Reformation .

Life

Origin and education

Gesner was the son of the subdeacon of Bunzlau Paul Gesner and his wife Anna geb. Cunrad. His father had been a student of Martin Luther in Wittenberg and had been ordained by the reformer Johannes Bugenhagen . Eleonora Maria Jauch (1722–1802), daughter of Bardowick canon Johann Christian Jauch (1702–1788) and ancestor of the Jauch-Overbeck family, is one of his descendants .

Gesner was orphaned in 1565. He was a kurrende pupil in Troppau and later in Bunzlau. He then attended the Elisabethan in Breslau . He broke off an apprenticeship as a goldsmith. In 1576 he was given a post at the Wilhelmskollegium in Strasbourg for five years . There he also heard the astronomer and musical theorist David Wolckenstein . In 1581 he became a baccalaureus, in 1583 master's degree in philosophy at the University of Strasbourg.

Theological work

Lucas Cranach the Elder : Castle Church Wittenberg
Salomon Gesner's grave slab, (today) on the southern outer wall of the castle church

He found his first job as an educator in the house of the Hungarian humanist Andreas Dudith in Breslau. In 1585 he became principal of the school in Bunzlau, which he brought to a new bloom. In 1589 he was appointed rector of the education department in Stettin . In 1591 he began quarreling with the local Melanchthonians as a representative of the concord formula . In 1592 he moved to Stralsund and worked there as a professor at the Sundisches Gymnasium and as an adjunct to the pastor. After he was appointed professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg in May 1593 , he received his doctorate in theology on August 20 under Polycarp Leyser the Elder and Samuel Huber . He was twice rector of the Wittenberg Academy. In 1595 he was also provost at the castle church in Wittenberg . At the same time he was a visitor to the Wittenberg consortium district .

His lectures at the university mainly dealt with the Old Testament , the Psalms and the prophets. He also published some writings in this area. As a representative of Lutheran Orthodoxy , Gesner primarily fought Calvinism and the associated cryptocalvinism . Samuel Huber and Martin Moller , among others, were involved in his disputes . He died of a hemorrhage “as a result of excessive exertion at a sermon” and commented: “Wolan, it is better to preach too dead than to celebrate or to feast too dead.”

meaning

Gesner's theological works are less innovative, “they stand in the Lutheran tradition and are for the most part ideologically tinged pamphlets against the Melanchtonians and the Reformed Church. G. is significant in church history because of his combative attitude. The dissatisfaction in the Protestant denomination in the Reformation era shows itself very significantly in his person. ”(Oliver Tekolf in the BBKL ) In the theological disputes among Protestants in the course of the Reformed confessionalization (also known as the“ Second Reformation ”) and Lutheran confessionalization, the after death Luther between the crypto Calvinists calculated Philippists one hand and the representatives of Concord showed the other hand, he counted immovably to the Lutheran, and opposed vehemently Calvinismus . After the fall of the Philippists in Wittenberg and Saxony, he began the dispute with the Melanchthonians in Pomerania in 1591. His controversy resulted in his appointment as professor of theology in Wittenberg and court preacher at the traditional castle church, on the door of which Luther once posted his 95 theses . He did not disappoint the expectations placed on him: from Wittenberg he tracked the Calvinists and tried to suppress them, as was not least his pamphlet “Christian Warning for the Estates, Towns and Commoners in Silesia, which they guard for Calvinist and Sacramento Irish and want to provide ”from 1602.

Selection of works

  • De psalmorum dignitate. Wittenberg 1593.
  • Aegidius Hunnius , Salomon Gesner, and Polycarpus Leyser : Controversiae inter Theologos Wittenbergenses de Regeneratione et Electione Dilucida Explicatio. Frankfurt 1594. 4to.
  • Meditationem generalem psalteri. Wittenberg 1597.
  • Passio Christi. Wittenberg 1600.
  • De Conciliis libri quattuor. Wittenberg 1600.
  • Faithful Christian warning to the estates, towns and commons in Silesia that they want to take care of Calvin and Sacramento Iraq. Wittenberg 1601.
  • Thorough refutation of the Calvinian Apologiae Martini Molleri , the most distinguished preacher in Görlitz. Wittenberg 1602.
  • Compendium doctrina coelestis. 1606 (posthumously).
  • Commentarius in David's psalmos. 1606 (posthumously).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony, The Registratures of Church Visitations in the Former Sächsischen Kurkreise , 2009, ISBN 1-110-09003-X , p. 171
personal data
SURNAME Gesner, Salomon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gessner, Salomon; Geßner, Salomon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant clergyman
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1559
PLACE OF BIRTH Bunzlau
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 1605
Place of death Wittenberg