PESCATORE (PISCATOR, FISCHER), JOHANN

PESCATORE (Piscator, Fischer), JOHANN. —
Calvinist theologian, born in Strasbourg on 27 March 1546,
died in Herborn on 27 July 1625.

After his humanistic studies in his native city, he went to Tübingen, where he was a pupil of the Lutheran Andreae: the reading of the Insti-

(International Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology)
PESCATORE – The fisherman, who draws from the water the little fish that has bitten the hook of the line, and the Baptism of Christ. Fresco from the beginning of the 3rd century in cubiculum A2 of the Sacraments – Rome, cemetery of S. Callisto.

Calvin’s Institute converted him to Calvinism, and consequently he had to leave Strasbourg and then Heidelberg, which had not yet converted to Calvinism; he subsequently became a school director at Siegen, professor of theology at the Casimirianum in Neustadt in the Palatinate and, from 1584, professor and rector at the Academy of Herborn, recently founded by the Count of Nassau. He supervised a new German translation of the Bible of Calvinist tendency (1597–1603), commented on all the sacred books, and engaged in polemics with Lutherans and Catholics; against Cardinal R. Bellarmino he wrote: Libri duo de insti-ficatione hominis coram Deo (Herborn 1590). The Aphorismi doctrinae christianae (1586) is a much-read and frequently reprinted manual of theology. In Protestant circles, his theological thesis that only Christ’s passive obedience, and not his active obedience, possessed satisfactory efficacy provoked particularly lively reactions.

BIBLI: H. Schlosser, Piscators Bibel. Tubinga 1908; O. Ritschl, Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus. III, Berlino 1926, pp. 311–14; F. L. Bos, J. Piscator, Heidelberg 1932.

Mario Bendiscioli