918J Briesmann, Johannes 1488–1549
Vnderricht vnd ermanung Doct. Johannis Grießsmans, Barfůsser Ordens, an die Christlich gemain zů Cotbus
Wittenberg, 1523. (Augsburg, Steiner,* 1523.) Price $3,500
Quarto. A-B4 Bound in later vellum covered with printed leaf
The Prussian theologian Johannes Briesmann (also Brismann or Briessmann,or as here Grießsmans) was a follower of Luther and an advocate of his teachings. In 1523, on Luther’s advice, he was dismissed from the theological faculty in Wittenberg and appointed to Königsberg to reorganize church affairs. This extremely rare work is directed against Jacob Schwederich, who had slandered Briesmann and Luther in front of the Cottbus congregation
Johannes Briesmann he was serving as lecturer at the University of Wittenberg and pastor at St. Anne’s, directly participating in Luther’s early didactic reform of the arts and theology faculties. The Underricht und Ermanung is, , a catechetical sermon extended into pamphlet form—a teaching exercise aimed at clarifying Luther’s doctrine of faith, confession, and ecclesial authority against slander (Jacob Schwederich).
Briesmann’s tract is organized around disputation and exhortation rather than scholastic quaestio. This hybrid form (half-lecture, half-sermon) was typical of Wittenberg-trained reformers and shows the didactic transposition of university theology into parish pedagogy.
The tract was written in response to attacks made by Jacob Schwederich before the congregation at Cottbus, where Briesmann and Luther had apparently been publicly maligned. Rather than answering through formal scholastic refutation, Briesmann adopts the newer Wittenberg mode of pastoral controversy: exhortation directed to ordinary Christians. The text moves fluidly between instruction, defense, admonition, and preaching, embodying the distinctly Lutheran conviction that doctrinal conflict was not merely an academic matter but something affecting the spiritual health of the entire Christian community.
The work is especially revealing as an example of the pedagogical culture emerging around Luther in the early 1520s. It represents the moment when academic theology was being deliberately translated into parish instruction and civic persuasion through cheap vernacular print. Briesmann’s pamphlet thus stands at the intersection of several transformations at once: the migration of authority from cloister to pulpit, the elevation of German as a language of theology, and the increasing use of the press as an extension of the evangelical classroom.
Luther’s 1520s reforms sought to fuse the “doctrina et vita” model of the medieval studium with evangelical preaching. Briesmann embodies this transition: a university master turned pastor doctor. His tract shows how Luther’s didactic reforms radiated outward from Wittenberg into civic and parish life, using the printed word as an extension of the classroom.
VD16 B 8306. – not in Adams or Panzer. –VD16 B 8306. Not in Adams or Panzer. Extremely rare. Like much ephemeral evangelical printing of the early 1520s, this pamphlet was produced for immediate doctrinal and pastoral use rather than long-term preservation. Surviving examples are now concentrated almost entirely in major institutional collections, including the University of Pennsylvania, Folger Shakespeare Library, Oxford University, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the Herzog August Bibliothek, and the Reformationsgeschichtliche Forschungsbibliothek Wittenberg.
* Actual place of publication and publisher statement from VD 16; in his Letter to the Folger, 11-30-78, J. Benzing gives: Melchior Ramminger, Augsburg as printer.
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