Original scientific paper
Matthias Flacius Illyricus as a Teacher at the Early Modern Lutheran Universities of Wittenberg and Jena in the Middle of the Sixteenth Century
Luka Ilić
orcid.org/0000-0002-3289-8754
; Leibniz Institute for European History, Mainz, Germany
Abstract
The multi-faceted career of the Croatian-born Matthias Flacius Illyricus (1520–1575) included teaching positions at the newly founded early modern evangelical universities in Saxony and Thuringia. Flacius, who had been a student in Wittenberg, obtained his first appointment at the Faculty of Arts as a teacher of Hebrew in 1544, a post he held until Easter 1549. After an academic hiatus between 1549 and 1557 spent in Magdeburg, which nonetheless denoted an important period of gaining broad recognition as a theologian and church historian, Flacius was invited to occupy the chair in New Testament at the Collegium Jenense. The University of Jena functioned from its beginning as a Lutheran confessional academic institution and Flacius’ role as a leading theologian was of great significance in setting a course for the religious landscape of Ernestine Saxony. This paper also addresses issues of hierarchy concerning faculties, disciplines and professors, and explores the related questions of institutional flexibility versus rigidity within the university system through Flacius’ example. Additionally, it touches upon some of the interplay between the confessional identity of the universities and the principle of “cuius regio, eius religio” that operated in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation from 1555 onward.
Keywords
Matthias Flacius Illyricus; Wittenberg; Jena; confessional education; religious politics; early modern Protestant universities; sixteenth century
Hrčak ID:
120139
URI
Publication date:
17.2.2014.
Visits: 3.137 *