COCHLAEUS (DOBENECK), JOHANNES. - Eminent Catholic polemicist, b. in 1479, d. at Breslau on 11 Jan. 1552. He was called C. from the village of Wendelstein (Cochlea) where he was born. He fought the reformers of his time.
After completing his early studies at Nuremberg, he entered the University of Cologne in 1504, where in 1507 he obtained the degree of "magister artium." In 1515 he accompanied Pirckheimer's nephews to Bologna and took his doctorate in 1517 at Ferrara; he then made a journey to Rome. Having returned to his homeland, at first he was not averse to Luther's activity, believing it useful for removing certain abuses that had crept into the Church, but he soon sensed how far that rebellion could lead, namely to the destruction of religious unity and of the entire ecclesiastical legislation; he then changed into one of the strongest opponents of the new doctrines, indeed, in order to be able to continue his struggle, he renounced a advantageous position that was being offered to him in Rome.
In 1524 he accompanied Card. Campeggio to Nuremberg and, in 1529, Card. Albert of Brandenburg to the Diet of Speyer. In that same year he was summoned by Duke George of Saxony to succeed his secretary, Jerome Emser. On the duke's death, in 1539, he retired to Breslau; he was the companion of Bishop Hutter of Eichstätt at the Conference of Regensburg; in 1549 he is found at Mainz, devoted to writing; and in 1549 at Breslau, where he remained until his death.
His struggle against the so-called "reformers" was tireless; not a year passed from 1522 until his death in which he did not publish some writing against them. His vast theological erudition guided him with assurance in the judgments he gave on the new doctrines; practiced in the handling of Holy Scripture, he always had at hand the texts needed to refute the arguments of his opponents; a careful observer, from the many diets and assemblies in which he participated he knew how to profit in order to penetrate deeply into the intentions of the reformers. His history of the Hussites is still appreciated; his commentaries on the acts and writings of Luther from 1517 to 1546 show him better informed than many other writers, for example on the true reason for Luther's journey to Rome in 1511, and on the civil war of Frankfurt (1525). The extracts, moreover, that he gives from the broadsheets and polemical writings of his time are of great value. In 1529, in the work against Luther: Adversus cucullatum Minotaurum Wittenbergensem, he demonstrates the contradictions into which the heresiarch falls. Of the same year is his writing on the 29 reasons that justify Communion under one species. In 1540 he presented to King Ferdinand I of the Romans his observations on the twenty-eight articles of the Augsburg Confession and began his Philippics against Philip Melanchthon, of whom he confesses that his outbursts were indeed less crude than Luther's but more hateful because of the fallacies, the apparent gentleness and the serpentine hypocrisy of the author. Against Calvin he wrote on the veneration of relics, and against Musculus and Bullinger on the Priesthood and Sacrifice of the New Law. In C.'s writings there are also shadows; friends and enemies criticize his style as not always correct, sometimes violent and incoherent. The title he gives to Luther of Minotaurus cucullatus and the style of the whole pamphlet indicate that he knew how to answer his opponents in kind and, like them, when necessary, to sting and mock, without however ever descending to their vulgar and ignoble level. The necessity of responding in haste and without immediate preparation to the sheets and pamphlets that Luther profusely threw to the public, sowing his false doctrines, explains in some manner the defects of C.'s writings, imposed by the urgency of enlightening and guiding ecclesiastics and laymen, who all took a passionate interest in the questions then under debate.
Bibliography7 works
Camillo Crivelli