BRENZ AND PAUL Hermann Ehmer The life and work of Johannes Brenz1 has been studied mostly on a local level, although his importance as a reformer ranking just after Luther and Melanchthon has always been known. Of course Brenz is, like a number of others, one of the reformers of Southwest Ger- many. Here the reformation was indeed an urban event, as Arthur G. Dickens2 called it. In the German Southwest between Strassburg and Nuremberg, Frankfurt on the Main and Basel were the most important of the free imperial cities of the Empire, self-governing republics under the emperor. These cities varied in size from those with a rather large territory down to smaller ones where the borders of the territory were not far from the city walls. There were often tensions between the imperial cities and the princes of the surrounding territories, dating back to the wars in the 13th and 15th centuries. The age of the Ref- ormation was then the last period in which the imperial cities played an infl uential political role, mostly due to outstanding theologians like Johannes Brenz. 1 An extensive and still useful biography based on a thorough knowledge of the sources: Julius Hartmann and Karl Jäger, Johannes Brenz: Nach gedruckten und ungedruck- ten Quellen. 2 vols. (Hamburg, 1840/1842). More recent and comprehensive: Mar- tin Brecht, “Johannes Brenz”, in Gestalten der Kirchengeschichte, ed. Martin Greschat, vol. 6 (Stuttgart, 1981) pp. 103–117; Isabella Fehle, ed., Johannes Brenz 1499–1570. Prediger—Reformator—Politiker. (Schwäbisch Hall, 1999). For Brenz’s work see: Walther Köhler, Bibliographia Brentiana: Bibliographisches Verzeichnis der gedruckten und ungedruckten Schriften und Briefe des Reformators Johannes Brenz (Berlin, 1904). The texts of letters of and to Brenz are provided in: Theodor Pressel, ed., Anecdota Brentiana: Ungedruckte Briefe und Bedenken von Johannes Brenz. (Tübingen, 1868). A modern edition of Brenz’s works has been started a while ago: Martin Brecht and Gerhard Schäfer, eds. Johannes Brenz: Werke: Eine Studienausgabe. 5 vols., (Tübingen, 1970ff.).—A brief introduction into Brenz’s life and work for the English reader provides: James Martin Estes,Christian Magistrate and State Church. The Reforming Career of Johannes Brenz (Toronto, 1982). A collection of texts concerning the problem of church and magistrate translated into English: Godly Magistrates and Church Order: Johannes Brenz and the Establishment of the Lutheran Ter- ritorial Church in Germany 1524–1559. Texts Selected, Translated and Edited by James M. Estes (Toronto, 2001). 2 Arthur G. Dickens, The German Nation and Martin Luther (London, 1974). 166 hermann ehmer Origins and Education Johannes Brenz himself was the son of one of the smallest imperial cities.3 He was born on 24 June 1499 in Weil der Stadt, a half-day’s journey to the west of Stuttgart, the capital of the Duchy of Württem- berg. His father was a goldsmith by profession and he was for a long time Schultheiss (presiding offi cer) of the court in Weil, and to hold that honorable offi ce he had to have been a man of considerable means. He was, moreover, able to provide three of his sons with a university education. Brenz attended the Latin school in his native Weil and then, beginning in 1510, in Heidelberg, where he may have become acquainted with Philip Melanchthon, who studied in Heidelberg from 1509–1512. Before Brenz matriculated at the University of Heidelberg on 13 October 1514 he attended school in Vaihingen an der Enz, close to his native Weil. At the University of Heidelberg he pursued the arts curriculum, earning his B.A. in 1516 and his M.A. on 18 October 1518. After that he began studying theology. Brenz’s studies were infl uenced by the Heidelberg humanism founded by Rudolf Agricola. Pursuing the humanist ideal of the vir trilinguis, Brenz studied Greek, taught by Johannes Oecolampadius and Hebrew, taught by a converted Spanish Jew named Matthew Adriani. The best evidence of Brenz’s humanistic orientation as a student, however, is his handwriting, a clear humanist italic that changed little in the suc- ceeding decades. Conversion and Reforming Career Brenz’s studies—and the course of his life—were given a new direction due to Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation on 26 April 1518, in which Luther demonstrated that justifi cation, salvation, and life are granted by God alone. On the following day, Martin Bucer, accompanied by Brenz, visited Luther to discuss these matters further. This was the beginning 3 For an introduction to the topic of the imperial cities and the Reformation, see Miriam U. Chrisman, “Cities in the Reformation” in William S. Maltby, ed., Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research II (St. Louis, 1992), 105–27, and Peter G. Wallace, “Cities” in OER 1:354–60..