ARNOLD, GOTTFRIED. - Protestant theologian, b. at Annaberg (Saxony) on 5 Sept. 1666, d. at Perleberg on 30 May 1714. He did his university studies at Wittenberg, was a friend of Spener and followed his Pietism. A tutor at Dresden, he had to give up the post, because he had made himself unbearable with his rigorism. He was then professor of history at Giessen and obtained the title of historiographer to the king of Prussia. In 1700, having, out of scruple of conscience, renounced that post which distracted him too much, he was appointed preacher to the duchess of Saxony-Eisenach at Alstädt; in 1705 he was pastor at Werben and in 1707 at Perleberg.
He was a great scholar of the primitive Church, which he describes as an ideal never surpassed and whose history he traces in the book Unpartheische Kirchenund Ketzerhistorie, published at Frankfurt partly in 1699 and partly in 1700, under the title: Fortsetzung und Erläuterung der Unpartheischen Kirchenund Ketzerhistorie. In it the A. makes the apology of almost all heresies, attributing the calamities of the Church to the ecclesiastics, without sparing his own coreligionists. In this way he aroused numerous controversies, to which the complete edition of the work, published at Schaffhausen in 1740-42, gives echo. Also worthy of note are the works: Historia et descriptio theologiae mysticae seu theosophiae arcanae et reconditae (Frankfurt 1702) placed on the Index by decree of 20 Sept. 1706; Die Historie von der Lehre, Leben und Thaten der beyden Apostel und Jünger Christi, Petri und Pauli (Rostock 1708). A devotional book is also his: Wahre Abbildung des inwendigen Christentums (Leipzig 1709).
Of a good and pious soul, the A. felt deeply the Catholic mystics, but could not free himself from the current prejudices against the Church and the papacy; he always saw an opposition between personal piety and ecclesiastical authority, and in all the heterodox he recognized traces of the true Gospel and regarded them as precursors of the Reformation.
Bibliography6 works
Angelo Audino