20 April 1558 A.D. Johannes Bugenhagen (b. 24 Jun 1485)—Wittenbergian Resident; Pastor of St. Mary’s; Luther’s Confidant
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April 1558 A.D. Johannes Bugenhagen (b. 24 Jun 1485)—Wittenbergian Resident;
Pastor of St. Mary’s; Luther’s Confidant; Lutheran Reformer, Luther Called Him
“Dr. Pomeranus;” Annoying Letter to
English Reformers “Crosses” Thomas More
Editors. “Johannes Bugenhagen.”
Reformation 500. N.d.
http://reformation500.csl.edu/bio/johannes-bugenhagen/. Accessed 16 Dec 2014.
Johannes Bugenhagen
Known mostly as pastor of the city church in
Wittenberg during the spread of the Reformation and as Luther’s own father
confessor, Johannes Bugenhagen played a significant role in translating early
Protestant theology into actual church practice. A humanist rather than a
theologian, Bugenhagen accepted the Reformation and became instrumental in its
propagation and organization until his death in 1558. During his time at
Wittenberg, he would draft church orders for numerous cities and would
personally assist in implementing reforms in both his native Pomerania and in
Denmark. He also remained a close confidant of Luther and Melanchthon, marrying
Luther to Katherine von Bora in 1525 and later preaching at his funeral in
1546.
Bugenhagen (or Pomeranus, as he was known using his
Latinized name) was born in 1485 in Wollin, Pomerania. Little is known of his
early life. He matriculated at the university in Greifswald to study classics
in 1502, then in 1504 became rector at Treptow. He was ordained as a priest in
1509 and later appointed to a lectureship at the Premonstratensian monastery in
Belbuck. Prior to his arrival at Belbuck, Bugenhagen had come under the influence
of Erasmus and the humanist approach to Scripture, and it was during his years
there that he began plying his humanist wares. First, in 1518 he compiled a
history of Pomerania at the request of the reigning duke (which was not
published until the eighteenth century). Second, his study of Scripture caused
him to embrace many of the early Reformation ideas, eventually leading him to
begin a fateful correspondence with Luther.
By 1520, Bugenhagen had written to Luther for
spiritual guidance and received from the Wittenberg reformer a copy of his 1520
treatise, Freedom of a Christian. Bugenhagen eventually accepted the
Reformation and in April 1521 left Belbuck for Wittenberg to study theology.
Since Luther was soon to be hidden in the Wartburg after the Diet of Worms, the
new arrival spent the majority of his time studying with Melanchthon, with whom
he also lodged. Due to his lack of academic rank, Bugenhagen lectured privately
on the Psalms and letters of St. Paul. In 1523, he was named pastor of the Wittenberg
city church, St. Mary, where he would serve until his death. He finally earned
his doctor’s degree in theology from Wittenberg in 1533, and in the succeeding
years his pastorate was linked with the fourth chair of theology at Wittenberg,
where he continued to lecture on Scripture.
During the years immediately following the Diet of
Worms, Bugenhagen began to play an increasingly prominent role in Wittenberg.
In 1522, he was the first of all the Wittenberg reformers to marry. His
marriage, however, stood in the way of a pastoral call he received to Hamburg,
as the Hamburg city council rescinded the call upon finding out that he was
married. He would officiate Luther’s own wedding in 1525 and defended the
reformer’s right to do so in print. He took Luther’s side again in the disputes
with Johann Agricola over Christian freedom. Bugenhagen also stood at the
forefront of the early Eucharistic controversies with the South German and
Swiss reformers. In 1525, he was the first of the Wittenberg reformers to oppose
Zwingli’s teaching on the Eucharist. Over a decade later, he would aid Luther
and Melanchthon in reaching agreement on the controversial doctrine with Martin
Bucer and the South German contingent at the 1536 Marburg Colloquy.
As a humanist biblical scholar, Bugenhagen devoted
most of his intellectual energy to lecturing on Scripture. He would publish a
number of commentaries in subsequent years. His most famous, a 1524 commentary
on the Psalms, grew out of his early lectures at Wittenberg and went through
numerous printings. His other commentaries included the minor letters of Paul
(published 1525), Romans (1527), the Gospel of Matthew (1543), Jeremiah (1546),
and Jonah (1550). Two other contributions to the Protestant use of Scripture
were notable. In 1524, Bugenhagen transposed Luther’s German New Testament into
Low German—ahead of the publication of Luther’s own version—and his reading
would become popular and widely printed. He also composed a harmony of the
passion narrative drawn from the four Gospels. He had begun the task as early
as 1519 at Belbuck, but he would resume it again in 1522 at Wittenberg and see
it through to publication in 1524. The harmony became enormously influential in
Protestant private and corporate devotion through the centuries.
Bugenhagen’s most significant contribution to the
Reformation undoubtedly resulted from his role as a church administrator. As
pastor of the Wittenberg city church, he had joined Luther and Melanchthon in
the Saxon visitations of 1527–28, and he subsequently became a highly sought
after candidate for bureaucratic posts throughout the newly reformed churches.
In 1533, he was named superintendent for the district east of the Elbe River,
acting functionally as its bishop. He in fact later turned down offers to
become bishop of both Schleswig in 1541 and Cammin in 1543. Bugenhagen’s
talents in ecclesiastical administration were employed elsewhere to establish
the Reformation in new lands. He was invited by the Pomeranian dukes, Philipp
II and Barnim XI, to begin reforms in his native land in 1534–35. Later, in
1537, he began reform in Denmark. He would crown a Protestant, Christian III,
as prince in September of that year, and for his contributions was offered a
professorship at Copenhagen (which he ultimately declined).
In the course of his administrative efforts,
Bugenhagen was called upon to compose church orders (Kirchenordnungen)
that would govern various aspects of ecclesiastical and civil life in the
reformed territories. The first of these orders was drafted for Braunschweig
(1528), but others would follow in Hamburg (1529), Lübeck (1531), Pomerania
(1534), Denmark (1537), Holstein (1542), Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1543), and
Hildesheim (1544). Bugenhagen’s orders generally followed the Lutheran principle
of freedom in matters of adiaphora, which enabled him to adapt the rites to
local custom, but also embodied the core theological features of early
Lutheranism. The orders themselves extended beyond liturgical rites to include
regulations for schools, recommendations for the care of the indigent, and
specific instructions for the reform of the clergy, and they became templates
for the composition of new Kirchenordnungen in other Protestant
territories.
On February 22, 1546, Bugenhagen preached the funeral sermon for his longtime
friend and ally in reform, Luther. The final years of his life were spent
largely marginalized within the confessional struggles associated with the
interims of 1548 and the warfare that preceded and followed them. He took sides
with his colleague, Melanchthon, against the Gnesio-Lutherans of Magdeburg, and
found himself suspected of theological compromise. He died April 20, 1558, in
Wittenberg, and was buried under the altar at the Wittenberg city church where
he had served for 35 years.
I note the mention of Bugenhagen's Low German. There actually were a number of Plattdeutsch versions of Scripture prior to Luther's Mittelhochdeutsch one.
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