Johannes Oecolampadius - Career

Career

From the beginning the sermons of Oecolampadius centred on the atonement, and his first reformatory zeal showed itself in a protest (De risu paschali, 1518) against the introduction of humorous stories into Easter sermons. In 1520 he published his Greek Grammar. The same year he received an invitation to become preacher in the high church in Augsburg. Germany was ablaze with the questions raised by Martin Luther's theses, and Oecolampadius's introduction into this environment, when he championed Luther's position, especially in his anonymous Canonici indocti (1519), seems to have compelled him to severe self-examination, which ended in his becoming a monk. A short experience convinced him that this was not for him the ideal Christian life ("amisi monachum, inveni Christianum" — "I have lost the monk; I have found the Christian"), and in February 1522 he made his way to Ebernburg, near Creuznach, where he acted as chaplain to a little group of men holding the new opinions who had settled there under the leadership of Franz von Sickingen.

Oecolampadius returned to Basel in November 1522, as vicar of St Martin's, and (in 1523) reader of the Holy Scripture at the University of Basel. Lecturing on Isaiah, he condemned current ecclesiastical abuses, and in a public disputation (August 20, 1523) gained such success that Erasmus writing to Zürich said, "Oecolampadius has the upper hand amongst us." He became Huldrych Zwingli's assistant, and after more than a year of earnest preaching and four public disputations in which the popular verdict went in favour of Oecolampadius and his friends, the authorities of Basel began to see the need for Reformation.

At last Oecolampadius was able to refrain from some practices he believed to be superstitious. Basel was slow to accept the Reformation; the news of the Peasants' War and the inroads of Anabaptists prevented progress; but by 1525, it seemed as if the authorities were resolved to listen to schemes for restoring the purity of worship and teaching. In the midst of these hopes and difficulties Oecolampadius married, in the beginning of 1528, Wibrandis Rosenblatt, the widow of Ludwig Keller, who proved a suitable wife. After his death she married Wolfgang Fabricius Capito, and, when Capito died, Martin Bucer. She died in 1564.

In January 1528 Oecolampadius and Zwingli took part in the disputation at Bern which led to the adoption of the new faith in that canton, and in the following year to the discontinuance of the Mass at Basel. In 1529 he became officially the Antistes of the Reformed Church in Basel. The Anabaptists claimed Oecolampadius for their views, but in a disputation with them he dissociated himself from most of their positions. He died on 24 November 1531.