Johann Eck Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Johann Maier EckJohann Eck (November 13, 1486 - February 13, 1543) was a 16th century theologian and defender of Catholicism during the Protestant Reformation. It was Eck who argued that the beliefs of Martin Luther and John Huss were similar.
Johann Eck (properly Johann Maier or Mayr) the German Roman Catholic controversialist, was born at Eck (later Egg, near Memmingen, 43 miles south of Augsburg), Swabia. He died at Ingolstadt.
At the age of twelve he entered the University of Heidelberg, which he left in the
following year for Tübingen. After taking his master's degree in 1501, he began the study of theology under Johann Jakob Lempp, and studied the elements of Hebrew and political economy with Konrad Summenhart. He left Tübingen in 1501 on account of the plague and after a year at Cologne finally settled at Freiburg-im-Breisgau, at first as a student of theology and law and later as a successful teacher. In 1508 he entered the priesthood and two years later obtained his doctorate in theology.
At Freiburg in 1506 he published his
first work, Ludicra logices exercitamenta and also
proved himself a brilliant and subtle orator,
although obsessed by an untamable controversial
spirit and unrestrained powers of invective. At
odds with his colleagues, he was glad to accept a
call to a theological chair at Ingolstadt in Nov.,
1510, receiving at the same time the honors and
income of a canon at Eichstadt. In 1512 he be
came prochancellor at the university and from
that time until his death he was in complete
control of the destinies of Ingolstadt, on which he
impressed the character of ultracatholicism which
made it a bulwark of the ancient faith in Germany.
His wide knowledge found expression in numerous
writings. In the theological field he produced his
Chrysopassus (Augsburg, 1514), in which he de
veloped a Semi-Pelagian theory of predestination,
while he obtained some fame as commentator
on the Summulae of Peter of Spain and on
Aristotle's De caelo and De anima. As a political economist he defended interest, despite the
opposition of the bishop of Eichstadt.
As early as the spring of 1517 Eck had entered
into friendly relations with Martin Luther, who had
regarded him as in harmony with his own views,
but this illusion was short-lived. In his Obelisci
Eck attacked Luther's theses, which had been sent
him by Scheurl, and accused him of
promoting the heresy of the Bohemian Brethren and of fostering anarchy
within the Church. Luther replied in
his Asterisci adversxes obeliseos Eccii,
while Andreas Karlstadt defended Luther's
views of indulgences and engaged in a violent
controversy with Eck.
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 Dec., 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.
The disputation between Eck and Karlstadt
began at Leipzig on June 27, 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 prove 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 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.
Despite the fact that Eck was thus virtually forced
to abandon his position, he succeeded, through his
good memory and his dialectic skill, in confusing
the heavy-witted Karlstadt and carried off the
nominal victory. He was far less successful against
Luther, who, as Eck himself confessed, was his
superior in memory, acumen, and learning. After
a disputation lasting twenty-three days (July
4-27), Eck was greeted as victor by the theologians
of the University of Leipzig, who overwhelmed
him with honors and sent him away with gifts.
The impression produced by Eck upon his auditors
during that momentous time may be best
learned from the account of the humanist Peter of Moselle, who described him as tall, stout, and
squarely built. His voice was full and rolling, and
of an admirable quality for an actor, or even for
a public crier, while the sum total of his features
would seem to argue the butcher or the
professional soldier rather than the theologian. As far
as his intellectual gifts were concerned, he had a
wonderful memory, which, if supplemented by
other talents in like proportion, would have made
him a marvel, but he lacked swiftness of
apprehension and deep insight, so that his masses of
arguments and citations were indiscriminate, and
he was filled with an inconceivable impudence
though he had the cleverness to conceal it.
Soon after his return to Ingolstadt,, Eck
attempted to persuade Elector Frederick of Saxony
to have Luther's works burned in public, and
during the year 1519 he published no less than eight
writings against the new movement. He failed,
however, to obtain a condemnatory decision from the
universities appointed to pronounce on the
outcome of the Leipzig disputation. Erfurt returned
the proceedings of the meeting to the Saxon duke
without signifying its approval, while Paris, after
repeated urging, gave an ambiguous decision
limited to "the doctrine of Luther so far as
investigated." Eck's only followers were the aged
heretic-hunter Hoogstraten and Emser of
Leipzig, together with the allied authorities of the
universities of Cologne and Louvain. Luther returned
Eck's assaults with more than equal
vehemence and about this time
Philipp Melanchthon wrote Œcolampadius; that
at Leipzig he had first become
distinctly aware of the difference
between true Christian theology and the
scholasticism of the Aristotelian doctors. In his
Excusatio (Wittenberg? 1519?) Eck, irritated all the
more because early in the year he had induced
Erasmus to caution the young theological student
against precipitating himself into the religious
conflict, retorted that Melanchthon knew nothing of
theology. In his reply to the Excusatio, Melanchthon
proved that he was thoroughly versed in theology,
and Eck fared still worse in October of the same
year, when he sought to aid Emser by a strongly-worded
tirade against Luther. Two biting satires, one by
Œcolampadius and the other by Wilibald Pirkheimer, stung
him to a fury which would be satisfied with nothing
less than the public burning of the entire literature
in the market-place at Ingolstadt, an act from
which he was restrained by his colleague Reuchlin.
Eck was far more highly esteemed as the dauntless
champion of the true faith at Rome than in
Germany. In Jan., 1520, he visited Italy at the
invitation of Pope Leo X, to whom he presented his
latest work De primate Petri adversus Ludderum
(Ingolstadt, 1520) for which he was rewarded with
the nomination to the office of papal protonotary,
although his efforts to urge the Curia to decisive
action against Luther were unsuccessful for some
time.
On June 16, however, appeared the fateful
bull Exurge Domine, in which forty-one
propositions of Luther were condemned as heretical or
erroneous. Entrusted with the publication of the
bull in Germany, Eck returned home, only to find
how rapidly Luther had gained favor. 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 instrument
down and threw it into the water, while in
other places the papal decree was subjected to
still greater insults.
At Vienna its publication
encountered grave difficulties, and Eck had good
cause to set up a votive tablet to his patron saint
upon his safe return to Ingolstadt, although even
there only the authority of the papal mandate
made the publication of the bull possible. This
last humiliation was due, in great measure, to the
fact that he had availed himself of the permission
to pronounce the papal censure on prominent
followers of the new movement besides Luther, and
had thus made his office a means of personal
revenge. Eck's letter to Charles V, written in Feb.,
1521, seems to have had little effect upon the
proceedings at the Diet of Worms.
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 in 1523
was successful. With great insight and courage
he showed the Curia the true condition of affairs
in Germany and pictured the general incapacity
of the representatives of the Church in that country.
Of the many heresy trials in which Eck was
the prime mover during this period it is sufficient
to mention here that of Leonhard Kaser, whose
history was published by Luther.
In addition to his inquisitorial duties, every
year witnessed the publication of one or more
writings against iconoclasm and in defense of the
doctrines of the Mass, purgatory, and auricular
confession. His Enchiridion locorum communium
adversus Lutherum et alios hostes ecclesiae (Landshut,
1525) went through forty-six editions before 1576.
As its title indicates, it was directed primarily
against Melanchthon's Loci, although it
also concerned itself to some extent
with the teachings of Huldrych Zwingli.
Eck
offered to refute Zwingli's "heresies"
in a public disputation (Aug. 13, 1524),
and appeared at Baden, only 12 m. n.w. of Zurich,
but in the hands of the bitterest partizans of the
Roman Church, and from May 21 until June 18,
1526, the debate went on. Zwingli was not present,
but supported his friends who were there by
constant suggestions. The affair ended decidedly
in favor of Eck, who induced the authorities to
enter on a course of active persecution of Zwingli and
his followers (Conference of Baden).
The effect of his victory at Baden
was dissipated, however, at the Disputation of
Bern (Jan., 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 Eck
played the leading part among theologians on the
Roman Catholic side.
While still at Ingolstadt Eck drafted for the
use of the emperor a list of 404 heretical
propositions from the writings of the Reformers, and
collaborated with more than twenty Catholic
theologians in writing the confutatio pontificia, in
which the Catholic refutation of the Protestants
was embodied. His efforts at peace,
in which his readiness to meet the
Reformers half-way shows him to have
been sincere, failed, however, on
account of the hatred and contempt with which he
was regarded by the Protestant theologians.
He
renewed his efforts at Worms in Jan., 1541, and
succeeded in impressing Melanchthon as being
quite prepared to give his assent to the main
principles of Protestantism. After the meeting
at Regensburg in the spring and summer of the
same year, on the other hand, he exerted himself
to prevent any compromise between the two theologies.
The last important phase of his activity was
his conflict with Butzer, whom he attacked on
account of the attitude assumed by the latter in his
edition of the transactions of the
Conference of Regensburg.
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. This is an Article on Johann Eck. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Johann Eck Education and Post at Ingolstadt
Disputations with Luther and Karlstadt.
Attacks on Luther and Melanchthon.
Papal Emissary and Inquisitor
Zwingli and his Followers
Peace Overtures