Johann Eck
Johann Maier von Eck | |
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Born | 13 November 1486 |
Died | 10 February 1543 | (aged 56)
Occupation(s) | German Scholastic theologian, Catholic prelate, and early counterreformer |
Signature | |
Johann Maier von Eck (13 November 1486 – 13 February 1543), often
Life
Johann Eck was born Johann Maier at Eck (later Egg, near
At the age of 12 he entered the
He left
At
As a
A ducal commission, appointed to find a way of ending the interminable strife between rival academic parties, asked Eck to prepare fresh commentaries on
He championed the cause of the papacy. The result of this new resolve were his chief work, De primatu Petri (1519), and his Enchiridion locorum communium adversus Lutherum ran through 46 editions between 1525 and 1576. From 1530 to 1535 he published a collection of his writings against Luther, Opera contra Ludderum, in 4 vols. He verbally assailed his friend, humanist and jurist Ulrich Zasius, for a doctrine proclaimed ten years before, and Erasmus's Annotationes in Novum Testamentum. Eck died at Ingolstadt on 10 February 1543.[1]
Disputations with Luther and Karlstadt
As early as the spring of 1517 Eck had entered into friendly relations with
A mutual desire for a public disputation led to a compact between Eck and Luther by which the former pledged himself to meet Karlstadt in debate at Erfurt or Leipzig, on condition that Luther abstain from all participation in the discussion. In December 1518, Eck published the twelve theses which he was prepared to uphold against Karlstadt, but since they were aimed at Luther rather than at the ostensible opponent, Luther addressed an open letter to Karlstadt, in which he declared himself ready to meet Eck in debate.[3]
The disputation between Eck and Karlstadt began at Leipzig on 27 June 1519. In the first four sessions Eck maintained the thesis that free will is the active agent in the creation of good works, but he was compelled by his opponent to modify his position so as to concede that the grace of God and free will work in harmony toward the common end. Karlstadt then proceeded to argue that good works are to be ascribed to the agency of God alone, whereupon Eck yielded so far as to admit that free will is passive in the beginning of conversion, although he maintained that in the course of time it enters into its rights; so that while the entirety of good works originates in God, their accomplishment is not entirely the work of God.[3]
Despite the fact that Eck was thus virtually forced to abandon his position, he succeeded in confusing Karlstadt and carried off the victory. He was less successful against Luther, who, according to Eck, was his superior in memory, acumen, and learning.
Attacks on Luther and Melanchthon
Soon after his return to Ingolstadt, Eck attempted to persuade Elector
Eck's only followers were the aged heretic-hunter
Eck fared still worse in October of the same year when he sought to aid Emser with a strongly worded tirade against Luther. Two satires, one by Œcolampadius and the other by Willibald Pirckheimer, angered Eck who pushed for the public burning of the entire literature in the market-place at Ingolstadt, an act from which he was restrained by his colleague Reuchlin.[3]
Papal emissary and inquisitor
Eck was more highly esteemed as "the dauntless champion of the true faith" at Rome than in Germany,
In July he returned to Germany with the bull Exsurge Domine directed against Luther's writings, in which forty-one propositions of Luther were condemned as heretical or erroneous. He now believed himself in a position to crush not only the "Lutheran heretics", but also his humanist critics. The effect of the publication of the bull, however, made this difficult.[3] Universities and humanists were at one in denunciation of the outrage; and, due the attitude of the people, Eck was barely able to escape from Saxony alive.[1]
At Meissen, Brandenburg, and Merseburg, he succeeded in giving the papal measure due official publicity, but at Leipzig he was the object of the ridicule of the student body and was compelled to flee by night to Freiberg, where he was again prevented from proclaiming the bull. At Erfurt the students tore the bull down and threw it into the water, while in other places the papal decree was subjected to still greater insults.[3]
In his anger he appealed to force, and his Epistola ad Carolum V (18 February 1521) called on the emperor to take measures against Luther, an appeal soon answered by the Edict of Worms (May 1521). In 1521 and 1522 Eck was again in Rome, reporting on the results of his nunciature. On his return from his second visit he was the prime mover in the promulgation of the Bavarian religious edict of 1522, which practically established the senate of the University of Ingolstadt as a tribunal of the Inquisition. In return for this action of the duke, who had at first been opposed to the policy of repression, Eck obtained for him, during a third visit to Rome in 1523, valuable ecclesiastical concessions. He continued unabated in his zeal against the reformers, publishing eight major works from 1522 to 1526.[1]
Wealth and power were included in the aspirations of Eck. He appropriated the revenues of his parish of Günzburg, while he relegated its duties to a vicar. Twice he visited Rome as a diplomatic representative of the Bavarian court to obtain sanction for the establishment of a court of inquisition against the Lutheran teachings at Ingolstadt. The first of these journeys, late in the autumn of 1521, was fruitless on account of the death of Leo X, but his second journey two years later, in 1523, was successful. Eck was the prime mover in many heresy trials, including that of Leonhard Kaser, whose history was published by Luther.[3]
Zwingli and his followers
In addition to his inquisitorial duties, every year witnessed the publication of one or more writings against
At
The effect of his victory at Baden was dissipated, however, at the Bern Disputation (January 1528), where the propositions advanced by the Reformers were debated in the absence of Eck, and Bern, Basel, and other places were definitely won for the Reformation. At the Diet of Augsburg (1530), Eck played the leading part among the Roman Catholic theologians.[3]
Peace overtures
For the Diet of Augsburg, while still at Ingolstadt, Eck compiled what he considered to be 404 heretical propositions[6] from the writings of the reformers[3] as an aid to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.
At Augsburg he was charged by the Emperor to draw up, in concert with twenty other theologians, a refutation of the Lutheran
He was at the
Eck's German New Testament
Special mention should be made, among Eck's many writings, of his German translation of the Bible (the New Testament, a revision of H. Emser's rendering) which was first published at Ingolstadt in 1537.[3]
Eck and the genealogy of Christ
Eck made a sermon on the genealogy of Christ, naming Mary's mother's parents as Emerentia and Stollanus: "The renowned Father John of Eck of Ingolstadt, in a sermon on St. Anne (published at Paris in 1579), pretends to know even the names of the parents St. Anne. He calls them Stollanus and Emerentia. He says that St. Anne was born after Stollanus and Emerentia had been childless for twenty years".[8]
Eck and the Jews
In 1541 Eck published his Against the Defense of the Jews (German: Ains Juden-büechlins Verlegung). In it he opposes the position of the Nuremberg reformer Andreas Osiander, who in the pamphlet Whether It Be True and Credible That the Jews Secretly Strangulate Christian Children and Make Use of Their Blood wanted to quash medieval suspicion that Jews were responsible for killing Christian children, desecrating the eucharistic Host, and poisoning wells. Eck accused Osiander of being a "Jew-protector" and "Jew-father", and no fewer than nineteen times reviled the Jews, and called them "a blasphemous race".[9]
Works
- Eckius, Joannes (1536), Enchiridion locorum communium adversus Lutherum et alios hostes ecclesiae (in Latin).
- Eck, Johannes; Smeling, Tilmann, Fraenkel, Pierre (ed.), Enchiridion locorum communium adversus Lutherum et alios hostes ecclesiae [Enchiridion (i.e., handbook or manual) of Commonplaces against Luther and other Enemies of the Church: with the additions by Tilmann Smeling], Corpus Catholicorum: Werke katholischer Schriftsteller im Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung. Works of Catholic authors in the Time of the Splitting of the Faith (in Latin), vol. 34, pp. 1525–2543.
- Battles, Ford Lewis (transl.) (1979), Enchiridion of Commonplaces against Luther and other Enemies of the Church, Grand Rapids, MI: ISBN 978-0-8010-3352-0.
- Eck, Johann (1538), Explanatio Psalmi vigesimi, ed., Bernhard Walde, 1928, Münster in Westfalen: Aschendorff.
See also
- Albert of Mainz
- Girolamo Aleandro
- Bartholomaeus Arnoldi von Usingen
- Gabriel Biel
- Thomas Cajetan
- Peter Canisius
- Johann Cochlaeus
- Johann Crotus (Crotus Rubianus)
- Jerome Emser
- John Fisher
- Hochstratus Ovans
- Jacob van Hoogstraten
- John Mair
- Karl von Miltitz
- Thomas More
- Thomas Murner
- William of Ockham
- Ortwin
- Johannes Pfefferkorn
- Johann Reuchlin
- Caspar Schatzgeyer
- Johann Tetzel
- Georg Witzel
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Eck, Johann Maier". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Johann Eck". www.newadvent.org. Retrieved 2021-01-15.
- ^ New Schaff–Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge(third ed.). London and New York: Funk and Wagnalls.
- ^ Heiko Oberman, "Masters of the Reformation", [Cambridge University Press, 1991], pp. 129
- ^ Walter I. Brandt, "Luther's Works", v. 45 [Muhlenberg Press, 1962], p. 305.
- Knickerbocker Press, 1910. Books.Google.com
- ^ Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. .
- ^ "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. Anne". www.newadvent.org. Retrieved 2020-09-11.
- Fortress Press, 1984), 37; cf. also pp. 4–5, 17, 36–37, 42, 46–47, 58, 72–73, 87, 91, 101, 121, 135.
Further reading
- "Jodocus Trutfetter" Jodocus Trutfetter .
- T. Wiedemann, Dr Johann Eck (Regensburg, 1865).
- Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). Encyclopedia Americana. .
Eck at post reformation digital library: https://www.prdl.org/author_view.php?a_id=726