Johann Maier von Eck

Background

Johann Maier von Eck was born on November 13, 1486, in Eck, Germany. His father, Michael Maier, was a peasant and bailiff (Amtmann) of the village.

Education

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 University, at first as a student of theology and law and later as a successful teacher where he was mentor to the prominent Anabaptist leader of Waldshut and Nikolsburg, Balthasar Hubmaier, and later retaining this relationship during their move to the University of Ingolstadt. In 1508 he entered the priesthood in Strasbourg and two years later obtained his doctorate in theology.

Career

In 1510 he began a lifelong career as professor of theology at the University of Ingolstadt. Eck’s early treatises attracted attention, among them one of the first theses (1514) attacking the medieval prohibition against charging interest on money.

Eck was friendly with Martin Luther until the appearance in 1517 of the latter’s Ninety-five Theses, which Eck assailed as heretical in a tract published in 1518. In the celebrated Leipzig disputation of 1519, Eck debated with Luther and his disciple, Andreas Karlstadt, on such topics as papal primacy and the infallibility of church councils. In 1520 Eck visited Rome, where he helped compose the papal bull Exsurge Domine (June 1520), in which Pope Leo X condemned 41 of Luther’s theses and threatened the latter with excommunication. Leo X then commissioned Eck to publish and enforce the new papal bull throughout Germany.

Eck went on to write extensively in defense of papal authority and traditional doctrine.

Eck was a prolific writer in Latin, and his many works in that language are notable as learned defenses of the Roman Catholic faith. His treatise entitled Enchiridion Against the Lutherans (1525) was a summary of contested Catholic beliefs, Protestant objections to them, and answers to these difficulties. The Enchiridion proved to be the most popular of Eck’s works and went through 91 editions in various languages before 1600, making it the best-known Catholic polemical handbook of the 16th century. Eck’s German-language translation of the Bible (1537), which he produced for Roman Catholics, was largely unsuccessful, however.

Achievements

• He was a Scholastic theologian, Catholic prelate, and early counterreformer who was among Martin Luther's most important interlocutors and theological opponents.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Short Biography

    (A short biography of Johann Eck, chief Catholic intellect...)

  • Johann Eck, Professor Der Theologie An Der Universitat Ingolstadt

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • Epistola de ratione studiorum suorum

    (Erasmus Wolph, De obitu Ioan. Eckii adversus calumniam Vi...)

  • Defensio contra amarulentas d. Andreae Bodenstein Carolstatini invectiones

    (Latin Edition.)

    1518

Religion

Traveling throughout Europe, he organized Roman Catholic opposition to German Protestantism, and he drafted the Catholic refutation (1530) of the Lutheran creed contained in the Augsburg Confession. He was the main Catholic polemicist in public debates with the Reformers John Oecolampadius in Baden (1526) and Philipp Melanchthon in Worms (1541).

Views

His aim had been to find a via media between the old and new; his temper was essentially conservative, his imagination held captive by the splendid traditions of the medieval church, and he had no sympathy with the revolutionary attitude of the Reformers.

He believed himself in a position to crush not only the Lutheran heretics, but also his humanist critics.

Personality

He was a powerful debater, but his victories were those of a dialectician rather than a convincing reasoner, and in him depth of insight and conviction were ill replaced by the controversial violence characteristic of the age.

Connections

Father:

Michael Maier