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Jakob Reineccius

Jakob Reineccius (also printed Reneccius, Reinecke, or Reinicke; 1572 – 28 June 1613) was a German Lutheran pastor and theological writer who served as provost of St. Petri in Berlin-Cölln and then as chief pastor of St. Catherine's (St. Catharinen) in Hamburg, where he became the first inspector of the city's new academic Gymnasium¹. The Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie describes him as a zealous Lutheran whose fairly numerous writings were directed mostly against Catholic and Reformed errors, and as a worthy polemical successor of his predecessor at St. Catharinen, Philipp Nicolai¹.

Key fact	Detail
Born / died	1572, Salzwedel in the Altmark; 28 June 1613, Hamburg, aged about 41¹
Education	Theology at Wittenberg; Magister¹
Offices	Pastor at Tangermünde; from 1601 Propst of St. Petri, Cöln an der Spree (Berlin), and Consistorialassessor¹
Hamburg	Elected 21 September 1609 as successor to Philipp Nicolai as Hauptpastor of St. Catharinen; installed 2 November 1609¹
Gymnasium	In 1612 the Senate named him first Inspector of the Gymnasium and Johanneum, with a theology professorship as a secondary office¹
Polemical writings	Panoplia (1609), Clavis (1611), Calvinianorum ortus (1612), Theologi libri duo (1613), Epistola contra foedera (1625, posthumous)²; Principes Controversiarum Articuli (1610/1624)¹¹^•⁴; Iusti Persona (1611)⁵
Name forms	GND records Reinicke, Reineccius, Reneccius, Reineck, Reinecke as variants³

Life and offices

Reineccius was born in 1572 in Salzwedel in the Altmark, not, as some accounts have it, in Tangermünde; he studied theology at Wittenberg and became Magister¹. His first clerical post was in Tangermünde². In 1601 he was called to St. Peter's in Cöln an der Spree, the Berlin sister town, as pastor and provost, and served as assessor of the consistory¹^•². The Wikisource transcription of the ADB article prints the year of this Berlin appointment as "1701", an evident misprint for 1601, the date given by Pierer and by the Schaff-Herzog encyclopedia¹^•².

Hamburg. On 21 September 1609 he was elected to succeed Philipp Nicolai as chief pastor of St. Catharinen in Hamburg, and the Senior Vagetius installed him in the office on 2 November 1609¹. In 1612 the Senate appointed him the first Inspector of the Akademisches Gymnasium and the Johanneum, adding a professorship of theology at the Gymnasium as a secondary office; he opened the Gymnasium with an address and lectured on the Epistle to the Galatians in the winter of 1612–13¹. He died in Hamburg on 28 June 1613, about 41 years old, so his tenure as Hamburg chief pastor lasted under four years¹.

The GND authority record lists his occupations as Pfarrer, Gymnasiallehrer, Rektor, Propst, Konsistorialrat, Magister, pastor at St. Katharinen in Hamburg, and Schulinspektor³.

Education and networks

His printed books document his networks. The Artificium Disputandi of 1609 is dedicated to Georg Wilhelm, Margrave of Brandenburg⁶, and the Clavis Sacrosanctae Theologiae of 1611 is dedicated to Johann von Löben⁷. The title page of the Artificium identifies him by his Berlin office, "Coloniae cis Suevum S.S. Trinitatis, & D. Petri Praeposito", provost of the Holy Trinity and of St. Peter's in Cölln on the Spree⁸.

Beliefs and polemical stance

The ADB characterizes him as a zealous Lutheran who defended church doctrine with the means of philosophy, and says his fairly numerous writings were directed mostly against Catholic and Reformed errors¹.

The scope of his polemic is visible in the works themselves. His posthumously reissued Principes Controversiarum Articuli treats six disputed articles: holy baptism, the Lord's Supper, Christ's person, eternal election of grace, the justification of a poor sinner before God, and the true church. The title announces that in these the "Christian and Lutheran faith" is to be strengthened invincibly⁴. The Artificium Disputandi is framed as a manual, by rules of logic and theological examples, for disputing against both Pontifician and Calvinian opinions⁸.

One of his sermons shows how sharply the confessional boundary ran in his Berlin parish. His 1611 Hamburg collection Iusti Persona, Et Fortuna contains three sermons on how a poor sinner is justified and saved before God out of grace through the merit of Jesus Christ, grasped with true faith, together with a farewell sermon preached at Cölln an der Spree on the question whether a preacher should, on "Calvinian, political advice", omit the Calvinists' name from the pulpit⁵. The catalog classifies the volume as both a sermon collection and a theological polemic⁵. His surviving polemics are directed against Catholic and Calvinist opponents; whether he took any position in the Crypto-Calvinist or Amsdorfian/Flacian disputes specifically is unknown¹.

Writings and where they survive

The Schaff-Herzog encyclopedia lists as his chief writings: Panoplia sive armatura theologica (Wittenberg, 1609); Clavis sacrae theologiae (2 vols., Hamburg, 1611); Fragstücke vom heiligen Abendmahl (1611); Veteris ac Novi Testamenti convenientia et differentia (1612); Calvinianorum ortus, cursus et exitus (1612); Theologi libri duo (1613); Verae ecclesiae inventio et dispositio (1613); Justum Christi tribunal (1613); and the posthumous Epistola contra foedera (Rostock, 1625)². The GND record adds three further titles: Contagium pestilentiale et Remedium spirituale, Calvinianorum ortus, cursus, Exitus, and Tria Controversa Problemata Oder Drey Streitfragen³.

Several of these works survive in digitized copies:

Artificium Disputandi (Wittenberg: Bergerus/Meisnerus, 1609), digitized by the University and State Library Halle in 2012⁶.
Principes Controversiarum Articuli. An edition appeared in Hamburg in 1610 under the author name "Jacob Reinecke", printed by Michael Hering, held by the Staatsbibliothek Berlin¹¹. A posthumous Hamburg edition of 1624 (4°, [4] Bl., 412 S., [1] Bl., Hering) is held by the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg (Scrin A/1866, VD17 23:626061Z) and digitized under URN urn:nbn:de:gbv:18-5-PPN7320583331⁴.
Clavis Sacrosanctae Theologiae (Hamburgi: Heringius, 1611; [16] Bl., 794 S., [2] Bl., [1] gef. Bl., 8°; VD17 3:007748N), a two-book Latin work on the arrangement of Scripture and the composition and delivery of sermons, with a thesaurus of sermons on all Sunday and feast-day Gospels and on Christ's Passion; digitized by ULB Halle in 2018 under a CC Public Domain Mark 1.0 license⁷.
Iusti Persona, Et Fortuna (Hamburg: Hering, 1611; [4] Bl., 92 S., 4°), digitized under URN urn:nbn:de:gbv:23-drucke/448-8-theol-1s1⁵.

The spelling of his name varies across the imprints and reference works, from Reneccio and Reinecke to Reineccius, and this instability complicates attribution³^•¹¹.

Namesakes and attribution confusion

A prosopographical project at the Free University of Berlin traces the historian Reiner Reineck's separate career: study at Marburg and Wittenberg (M.A. 1565), Jena and Leipzig (1569), work as tutor in noble families, and the history professorship at Frankfurt an der Oder in 1578⁹.

Digital bibliographies carry the same risk. The Post-Reformation Digital Library's author page for Jacob Reineccius (1572–1613) also indexes a 1617 Halberstadt installation sermon whose title page names "M. Johannem Reineccium Schermbeccens. Dom-Predigern", a different person, illustrating how attribution errors arise in digital catalogs⁸.

Reception and sources

The ADB article of 1888/89 cites Jöcher's Gelehrten-Lexicon (vol. III, Sp. 1987), Moller's Cimbria litterata, and the Lexikon der hamburgischen Schriftsteller (vol. VI, p. 212 ff.) as the places where his writings are enumerated¹. The Biblical Cyclopedia, derived from the Plitt-Herzog Realencyklopädie, gives his birth year as 1571 against the 1572 of ADB, GND, and Pierer¹⁰.

Two bibliographic notices of eulogies survive: a funeral sermon by Lukas Osiander (Tübingen, 1628) and J. M. Rauscher's Laudatio funebris (1629)².

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Philosophy, religion, and mythology › Religion and spirituality › Religious biographies › Pastors, evangelists, and missionaries › Catholic preachers and writers

Initially written Oct 10, 2026 · Edited: Oct 11, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026

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