Pescatore (Piscator, Fischer), Johann

PESCATORE (Piscator, Fischer), JOHANN. -
Calvinist theologian, b. at Strasbourg on 27 March 1546,
d. at Herborn on 27 July 1625.

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

(Int. Pont. Comm. arch. sacra)
PESCATORE - The fisherman, who draws from the water the little fish that has bitten the hook of the lens, and the Baptism of Christ. Fresco from the beginning of the 3rd century in cubiculum A2 of the Sacraments - Rome, cemetery of St. Callistus.

tute of Calvin made him convert to Calvinism, for which he had to leave Strasbourg and then Heidelberg, which had not yet passed over to Calvinism; he was subsequently school director at Siegen, professor of theology at the Casimirianum of Neustadt in the Palatinate and, from 1584, professor and rector in the Academy of Herborn, recently founded by the count of Nassau. He prepared a new German translation of the Bible of Calvinist tendency (1597-1603), commented on all the sacred books; he polemicized with Lutherans and with Catholics; against Cardinal R. Bellarmine he wrote: Libri duo de justificatione hominis coram Deo (Herborn 1590). The Aphorismi doctrinae christianae (1586) are a manual of theology much read and reprinted several times. In the Protestant milieu particularly lively reactions were aroused by his theological thesis that only the passive obedience of Christ, and not the active, would have satisfactory efficacy.