On the Life and Missions of Jacobus Andreae for the Reformation of the Lutheran Church, Part I

for whom almost innumerable labors were incumbent: he held six and sometimes nine sermons per week, performed all baptisms, cared for the souls of all—he alone—and was clearly a man of the people. However, since he was somewhat alienated from letters and academic life by the nature of his daily existence, Jacobus decided that what was lacking must be supplemented in another way, lest he appear a stranger to the course of scholarly life. There was indeed a great scarcity of teachers, but students sought the man all the more eagerly, as he was knowledgeable in ecclesiastical discipline and experienced in the new form. Nor were there lacking good men who, intending to provide for Jacobus’s domestic affairs, offered him boarders to whom he could impart daily private lessons and with whom he could also review public ones.

These were the beginnings of Jacobus’s public academic life, by which he supplemented in some way that which seemed to have been shorn from his revenues. Although the profit that he earned for himself by such a manner of living was very small, since from individual boarders he received no more than 28 florins for board, lodging, private instruction, discipline, cultivation, and remaining care. And this is the first period of the life laudably lived by Jacobus, which concludes with the death of Duke Ulricus on the 6th of November, 1550.

Let us hear Jacobus himself relating the cause of this hatred, loc. cit. p. 25: "Later, when a better aura blew under the rule of Duke Christophorus, and mass-priests were being dismissed wherever possible, and pastors were made from catechists, the stipends were indeed increased, but the previous revenues that individual pastors had held before the publication of the Interim and the dismissal were by no means granted. For this reason, the prefect of Bietigheim—who was the author of this counsel and held supreme authority under Prince Christophorus regarding ecclesiastical matters—was poorly regarded by most." For although the excellent Prince Duke Christophorus wisely ordained that ecclesiastical persons—namely, the provost and the Stuttgart parish priest, together with two ecclesiastical preachers—should oversee matters with the politicians, yet the theologians were removed by artifice; the prefect of Bietigheim and a few politicians snatched for themselves what pertained to the revenues and stipends of the ministers, leaving to the theologians only the care of doctrine and the governing of the character of pastors and ecclesiastics. Thus, that old tune, which we have heard sung again quite recently in a new form, is not so new, but is rather old and always odious.