GEILER (or GEYLER) VON KAISERSBERG, JOHANN (1445-gm),

This article appears in Volume V11, Page 553 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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GEILER (or GEYLER) VON KAISERSBERG, JOHANN (1445-gm), , " the German Savonarola," one of the greatest of the popular preachers of the 15th century, was born at Schaffhausenon the 16th of March 1445, but from 1448 passed his childhood and youth at Kaisersberg in Upper

Alsace

ALSACE (Ger. Elsass)

, from which place his current designation is derived. In 146o he entered the university of Freiburg in Baden, where, after graduation, he lectured for some time on the Sententiae of Peter Lombard, the commentaries of Alexander of Hales, and several of the works of Aristotle. A living

interest

INTEREST

in theological subjects, awakened by the study of John Gerson, led him in 1471 to the university of Basel, a centre of attraction to some of the most

earnest

EARNEST (probably a corruption of the obsolete arles or erles, adapted from Lat. equivalent arrha, due to a confusion with the adjective " earnest," serious, O. Eng. eornust, cognate with Ger. ernst)

spirits of the time. Made a

doctor

DOCTOR (Lat. for " teacher ")

of theology in 1475, he received a professorship at Freiburg in the following year; but his tastes, no less than the spirit of the age, began to incline him more strongly to the vocation of a preacher, while his fervour and eloquence soon led to his receiving numerous invitations to the larger towns. Ultimately he accepted in 1478 a

call

CALL (from Anglo-Saxon ceallian, a common Teutonic word, cf. Dutch kallen, to talk or chatter)

to the cathedral of Strassburg, where he continued to

work

WORK

with few interruptions until' within a short time of his death on the loth of March 1510. The beautiful pulpit erected for him in 1481 in the

nave

NAVE

of the cathedral, when the chapel of St Lawrence had proved , too small,`still bears witness to the popularity he enjoyed as a preacher in the immediate sphere of his labours, and the testimonies of Sebastian Brant, Beatus Rhenanus, Johann Reuchlin, Melanchthon and others show how

great

GREAT

had been the influence of his personal character. His sermonsbold, incisive, denunciatory, abounding in quaint illustrations and based on texts by no means confined to the Bible,taken down as he spoke them, and circulated (sometimes without his knowledge or consent) by his friends, told perceptibly on the German thought as well as on the German speech of his time.
Among the many volumes published under his name only two appear to have had the benefit of his revision, namely, Der Seelen Parodies von waren and volkomnen Tugenden, and that entitled Das irrig Schaf. Of the rest, probably the best-known is a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of lectures on his friend Seb. Brant's

work

WORK

, Das Narrenschzff or the Navicula or Speculum fatuorum, of which an edition was published at Strassburg in 1511 under the following title: Navicula sive speculum fatuorum praestantissimi sacrarumliterarumdoctoris Joannis

Geiler

GEILER (or GEYLER) VON KAISERSBERG, JOHANN (1445-gm),

Keysersbergii. -
See F. W. von Ammon, Geyler's Leben, Lehren and Predigten (1826) ; L. Dacheux, Un Reformateur catholique a la fin du X V siecle, J. G. de K. (Paris, 1876) ; R. Cruel, Gesch. der deutschen Predigt, pp. 538-576 (1879) ; P. de Lorenzi,

Geiler

GEILER (or GEYLER) VON KAISERSBERG, JOHANN (1445-gm),

's ausgewdhlte Schriften (4 vols., 1881) ; T. M. Lindsay, History of the Reformation, i. 118 (1906) ; and G. Kawerau in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopadie, Vi. 427.

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