LEISENTRIT, JOHANN. - Theologian, apostolic protonotary, b. at Olmütz (Olomouc) in 1527, d. at Bautzen on 14 Nov. 1586. A canon at Bautzen in 1551, he was its dean from 1559 until his death. After the apostasy of the last bishop of Meissen, Johann von Haigwitz, the nuncio Melchior Biglia appointed him (1567) administrator and general commissary for Lusatia, whose Catholicism he preserved against Lutheran propaganda.
L. collected many manuscripts and incunabula (destroyed by a fire in 1624). He was a prolific writer: his 24 surviving works deal with ascetical, liturgical, or polemical subjects (list in Gerblich [V. BIBLICA.], pp. 24-30). He promoted the use of the vernacular in the administration of the Sacraments and translated into German the rite of Baptism
(Bautzen 1562), Matrimony (ibid. 1568), and Extreme Unction (ibid. 1577). His request to celebrate Mass in German was rejected by s. Pio V and caused him to fall under suspicion of heresy. His hymns, disseminated throughout Germany, were published by Hans Wolrab: Geistliche Lieder und Psalmen... (2 vols., Bautzen 1565, 1567). The 1584 ed. bears the title: Catholicum hymnologium Germanicum orthodoxae veroeque Ecclesiae, with musical notation and settings. More important: Constitutio veteris apostolicae et orthodoxae Ecclesiae.