Johann Eck (13 November 1486 – 10 February 1543), also known as Johann Maier von Eck and often anglicized as John Eck, was a German Roman Catholic theologian, scholastic, prelate, and opponent of Martin Luther.
Life
Johann Eck was born Johann Maier at Eck (later Egg, near Memmingen, Swabia) and derived his additional surname from his birthplace, which he himself, after 1523, always modified into Eckius or Eccius, i.e. "of Eck". His father, Michael Maier, was a peasant and bailiff, or Amtmann, of the village. The boy's education was undertaken by his uncle, Martin Maier, parish priest at Rottenburg on the river Neckar. 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 .
Between 1516 and 1520, in addition to all his other duties, he published commentaries on the Summulae of Petrus Hispanus, and on the Dialectics, Physics and lesser scientific works of Aristotle. During these early years, Eck was considered a modern theologian, and his commentaries were informed by the New Learning. His aim, however, had been to find a via media between old and new. from the writings of the reformers
He was at the Colloquy of Worms in 1540 where he showed some signs of a willingness to compromise. In January 1541 he renewed these efforts and succeeded in impressing Melanchthon as being prepared to give his assent to the main principles of the reformers, e.g. justification by faith; but at the diet of Regensburg in the spring and summer of 1541, he reasserted his opposition.
Eck and the genealogy of Christ
Eck made a sermon on the genealogy of Christ, naming Mary's mother's parents as Emerentia and Stollanus: "The renowned Father John of Eck of Ingolstadt, in a sermon on St. Anne (published at Paris in 1579), pretends to know even the names of the parents St. Anne. He calls them Stollanus and Emerentia. He says that St. Anne was born after Stollanus and Emerentia had been childless for twenty years".
Eck and the Jews
In 1541 Eck published his Against the Defense of the Jews (German: Ains Juden-büechlins Verlegung). In it he opposes the position of the Nuremberg reformer Andreas Osiander, who in the pamphlet Whether It Be True and Credible That the Jews Secretly Strangulate Christian Children and Make Use of Their Blood wanted to quash medieval suspicion that Jews were responsible for killing Christian children, desecrating the eucharistic Host, and poisoning wells. Eck accused Osiander of being a "Jew-protector" and "Jew-father", and no fewer than nineteen times reviled the Jews, and called them "a blasphemous race".
Works
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- Eck, Johann (1538), Explanatio Psalmi vigesimi, ed., Bernhard Walde, 1928, Münster in Westfalen: Aschendorff.
See also
- Albert of Mainz
- Girolamo Aleandro
- Bartholomaeus Arnoldi von Usingen
- Gabriel Biel
- Thomas Cajetan
- Peter Canisius
- Johann Cochlaeus
- Johann Crotus (Crotus Rubianus)
- Jerome Emser
- John Fisher
- Hochstratus Ovans
- Jacob van Hoogstraten
- John Mair
- Karl von Miltitz
- Thomas More
- Thomas Murner
- William of Ockham
- Ortwin
- Johannes Pfefferkorn
- Johann Reuchlin
- Caspar Schatzgeyer
- Johann Tetzel
- Georg Witzel