ALTHAMER, ANDREAS. - Lutheran theologian and humanist, b. ca. 1500 at Brenz, near Gundelfingen (Württemberg) — whence also the appellations "Brentius, Gundelfingius" —, d. 1539. He studied at the Universities of Leipzig and Tübingen (1516-20), beginning already then his commentary on Tacitus's Germania. In 1521 he was an assistant at the school of Schwäbisch-Hall, in 1522 at that of Reutlingen, and in 1524 coadjutor priest at Schwäbisch-Gmünd. He was removed from this office because of his Lutheran propaganda, and then, having married, he went to Wittenberg, where he devoted himself to the study and diffusion of the new doctrine. The following year he was at Nuremberg and in 1527 as pastor at Eltersdorf, where he carried on a great literary and propagandistic activity. At the disputation of Bern, in Jan. 1528, he defended Lutheran theories against the Zwinglians; in May of the same year, at the invitation of the margraves of Ansbach-Brandenburg, he settled at Ansbach and was, in the following years, the animator and organizer of the Lutheran movement throughout that territory.
In the meantime he did not abandon humanistic studies. His
Commentaria Germaniae P. Cornelii Taciti, published for the first time in 1529 and, more elaborated, in 1536, had great success and various reprints. From 1537 he devoted himself to the introduction of Lutheranism into the Neumark. Among his writings (whose list is in Kolde, pp. 129-38) are remembered: Adnotationes in Epistolam beati Jacobi (Strasbourg 1527), in which he goes beyond Luther's own contempt for that epistle, a judgment later mitigated in a further commentary of 1533; Dialloge, hoc est conciliatio locorum Scripturae qui prima facie inter se pugnare sidentur (Nuremberg 1527), a work much read and widespread in its time;
Catechismus. Das ist Unterricht zunchristlichen Glauben, wie man die Jugend lehren und ziehen soll, in Frageweis und Antwort gestellt (Nuremberg 1528), the first Lutheran catechism in questions and answers, which marked an epoch in Protestant literature; Silva bibliorum nominum (Nuremberg 1530), which is a kind of biblical dictionary.