COCHLAEUS, JOHANN (1479-1552)

This article appears in Volume V06, Page 622 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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COCHLAEUS, JOHANN (1479-1552) , German humanist and controversialist, whose family name was Dobneck, was born of poor parents in 1479 at Wendelstein (near Nuremberg), whence his friends gave him the punning surname Cochlaeus (spiral), for which he occasionally substituted Wendelstinus. Having received some education at Nuremberg from the humanist Heinrich Grieninger, he entered (1504) the university of Cologne. In 1507 he graduated, and published under the name of Wendel-

stein

his first piece, In musicam exhortatorium. He left Cologne (May 151o) to become schoolmaster at Nuremberg, where he brought out several school manuals. In 1515 he was at Bologna, hearing (with disgust) Eck's famous disputation against

usury

USURY

, and associating with Ulrich von Hutten and humanists. He took his

doctor

DOCTOR (Lat. for " teacher ")

's degree at Ferrara (1517), and spent some time in Rome, where he was ordained priest. In 1520 he became dean of the Liebfrauenkirche at Frankfort, where he first entered the lists as a controversialist against the party of Luther, developing that

bitter

BITTER, KARL THEODORE FRANCIS (1867– )

hatred to the Reformation which animated his forceful but shallow ascription of the

movement

MOVEMENT

to the meanest motives, due to a quarrel between the

Dominicans

DOMINICANS

and Augustinians. Luther would not meet him in discussion at Mainz in 1521. He was present at the diets of Worms, Regensburg, Spires and
Augsburg. The peasants' war drove him from Frankfort; he obtained (1526) a canonry at Mainz; in 1529 he became secretary to Duke George of Saxony, at Dresden and Meissen. The death of his patron (1539) compelled him to take flight. He became canon (September 1539) at

Breslau

BRESLAU (Polish Wraclaw)

, where he died on the loth of January 1552. He was a prolific writer, largely of overgrown pamphlets, harsh and furious. His more serious efforts retain no permanent value. With humanist convictions, he had little of the humanist spirit. We owe to him one of the few contemporary notices of the

young

Servetus.
See C. Otto, Johannes Cochlaeus, der Humanist (1874) ; Haas, in I. Goschler's Dirt. encycloped. de la theol. cath. (1858); Brecher, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (1876); T. Kolde, in A. Hauck's Realencyklopadie fur Prot. Theol. u. Kirche (1898). (A. Go.*)

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