Erasmus Sarcerius (19 April 1501 in Annaberg – 18 November 1559 in Magdeburg)[1] was a German Protestant Gnesio-Lutheran theologian and reformer. He was the father of Lutheran philosopher Wilhelm Sarcerius.
Life
Sarcerius was the son of a burgher who became wealthy through metal trading in the Annaberg town mines.[2] He is said to have gone to school in Freiberg with Friedrich Myconius[3] and attended the University of Leipzig. After the death of his humanist teacher, Petrus Mosellanus, he moved to Wittenberg in 1524 and worked with fellow Lutheran reformers Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon.[2] Later in his life, he worked at Protestant theology schools in Austria and Rostock. Between 1531 and 1536, he worked as the first subrector at Katharineum, a Latin humanist school in Lübeck.[4] He was said to have been close to the rector, Hermann Bonnus [de], who would become the later superintendent at Lübeck.[2] By the time that he became a teacher, he had already rose to prominence through his writings on Protestantism.
In 1536, he was appointed rector of the Latin school in Siegen, and in the following year was appointed superintendent of the state by Count William I of Nassau-Siegen for the purpose of reorganizing the church.[3] In his liturgical career, Sarcerius published copies of his sermons, and wrote Lutheran catechisms, such as his dogmatic treatise Methodus divinae scripturae locos praecipuos explicans (A method of explaining the main passages of the divine scriptures) in 1539.
He served as a preacher in Andernach during the attempted Reformation of Archbishop Hermann of Wied and in 1545 in the Babenhausen municipality (now Babenhausen, Hesse), which belonged to the county of Hanau-Lichtenberg. While he was working in Nassau, Sarcerius received a request to work as professor to Lutheran students in Leipzig, but Count William I requested that he did not leave his current position.
After the Augsburg Interim, the count was not able to keep Sarcerius on tenure. Sarcerius hoped to move back to Lübeck or Rostock, but decided to take the pastorate at St. Thomas in Leipzig. Through his activities in West Germany, as well as in his native Saxony, Sarcerius acquired large influence in ecclesiastical circles. Contemporaries considered him a significant figure and treated him with great respect.
From Leipzig, Sarcerius was appointed superintendent to Mansfeld, where he worked as a visitator and organizer. He laid the groundwork for this in his writing Form und Weise einer Visitation für die Graf - und Herrschaft Mansfeld (Form and Manner of a Visitation for the County and Lordship of Mansfeld) in 1554. As a theologian with very strict Lutheran beliefs, he did not have an easy time conducting work due to the resistance of Georg Major's supporters, who had theological differences with Sarcerius. The popular attitude of the community eventually alienated Sarcerius completely from his former teacher Melanchthon, whom he later encountered once more at the Colloquy of Worms in 1557, which he attended with Erhard Schnepf, Victorinus Strigel, Johann Stössel, and one of the Mörlins by order of the dukes of Saxony.[2]
Engraving of Erasmus Sarcerius from 1565
Sarcerius was praised by his contemporaries as a pious and theologically well-read man who took a stand on disputes between Protestant divisions, although he was heavily influenced by the thinking of Martin Luther.
Sarcerius is also credited with being the first systematic theology in the United Kingdom, with an English translation by Richard Taverner of "The Common Places" by Sarcerius in 1538. The accomplishment is notable, due to no works like that of Sarcerius being published in his native German at the time. The translation, a dedication to Henry VIII, was ordered by the then-chief ministerThomas Cromwell, only a couple of years before his execution.[3]
Family
Eramus, with his wife Christine, had a son Wilhelm, who held a preaching position at St. Andrew's Church,[6] as well as daughters: Juliana, Magdalene, and Judith. His wife gave birth to a total of 11 children, many of whom died in infancy. They stayed in Siegen until 1549, until Wilhelm, Christine, and Juliana left Seigen for Leipzig to meet with their father in 1549 after religious persecution. Wilhelm later enrolled in the Bavarian Hohe Schule in 1554. In 1556, Wilhelm began as a court preacher at Eisleben with fellow Lutheran Hans Georg von Vorderort after being accused of Flacian error. He also accepted a position of preacher in the St Andreas church in 1560. A year prior, Erasmus had passed away from kidney stones. In 1568 he became a pastor at St. Peter's church. He died in 1582 in Altkirchen after being appointed superintendent of Styne county. Christine passed away in March 1552, dying during the stillbirth of her unborn son. Juliana went on to marry historian Matthew Dresser in 1566.[2] She died childless in 1598, but before her death, she and Matthias raised the children of her sister Judith, who orphaned her children. Their final living daughter, Magdalene, married Zacharias Praetorius on 21 Aug 1559 and died in Eisleben in 1560.[7][8]
Sarcerius was an advocate of chastity. In 1554, he wrote: "We Germans nowadays can boast but little of the virtue of chastity, and that little [virtue] is disappearing so fast that we can hardly speak of it any more. The number who still love it are so small... Debauchery prevails without fear and without shame."[9]
He also spoke out against the inappropriate use of Church funds that he witnessed in the city of Mansfeld, speaking on the under-the-table lending of money, unjustified project funding, and contributing to lavish lifestyles, rather than using tithes for their intended purpose. In 1555, he said, "The great Lords seek to appropriate to themselves the feudal rights and dues of the clergy and allow their officials and justices to take forcible action. The revenues of the Church are spent in making roads and bridges and giving banquets, and are lent from hand to hand without hypothecary security."[10]
After Julius von Pflung commanded that Lutheran theologians at the Colloquy of Worms denounce Zwinglians, Osiandrists, Adiaphorists, and Synergists, Sarcerius got into a dispute with Melanchtohon, who did not want to denounce any religious sect before further debate.[2]
Unlike Calvinists at the time, Sarcerius took a staunch position against predestination, and believed that the Scriptures refuted any theological claims of predestination. Sarcerius famously said, "Also here unto pertain such places as do promise a universal grace, whereby a man's conscience ought to lift itself up against such assaults as his reason makes of predestination, as this universal promise. 'God wills all men to be saved', 'God wills not the death of the sinner, but that he turn and do repentance', and 'Come unto me,', said Christ, 'all ye that labor & are laden, and I shall refresh you.' Surely it is an extreme madness a man to vex his mind with unremunerative questions concerning predestination, whereas he may comfort himself with the promise of grace... to desire & receive mercy offered by the Gospel, to endure in faith to the final end."[11]
Sarcerius, Erasmus (1536). De institutione scholae Sigensis [On the Institution of the School of Sigensis] (in Latin). ex officina Eucharij Ceruicorni Agrippinatis.
