STADION, CHRISTOPH. - Bishop, b. in March 1478 to a noble Swedish family at Schelklingen, d. at Nuremberg on 15 April 1543.
He studied at Tübingen (1490) and Freiburg im Breisgau, took his law degree at Ferrara, and in 1507 became a canon of Augsburg, then dean, and bishop on 20 April 1517. He was regarded as the most learned of the prince-bishops of Germany. Obeying the prescriptions of the Fifth Lateran Council, he set about reorganizing the diocese, held a synod in 1517 and in 1518 ordered its visitation; in Oct. 1520 he resolved to publish the papal bull against Luther, overcoming the doubts aroused in him by the divisions that had penetrated into Augsburg. On the occasion of the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, he took part in the great procession of the Corpus Domini, which Charles V also attended. Stadion was, however, quite well disposed toward an understanding with the Protestants. He moved, in fact, in the current of Erasmus of Rotterdam, whom he placed above the great theologians of antiquity and admired as a master of the spiritual life.
He openly favored granting the chalice to the laity, the abolition of fasting, the marriage of priests and the liturgy in German, for which he was reproved by the nuncio Morone at Hagenau in June 1540; in 1542, however, he promised him that he would provide for the reform of the diocese, while exaggerating its difficulties. Indeed, in many parts Protestantism had penetrated widely: in the Palatinate of Neuburg, in the county of Oettingen, in the imperial cities of Dinkelsbühl, Memmingen, Nördlingen and in the episcopal city, where it had arrived with a Zwinglian stamp. He died after having received, the previous month, the papal envoy Otto von Truchsess, who was to succeed him in the bishopric.
Bibliography3 works
Pio Paschini