Casper Schwenckfeld: Forgotten Reformer Issue 21 | 1989 Purchase this issue

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BORN AT NEISSE, Silesia, Crautwald attended the University of Cracow and became secretary to the Bishop of Breslau in 1514. A highly learned scholar, strongly affected by the humanist movement of the day, he met Schwenckfeld in 1523 and two years later, after Schwenckfeld spoke to him about the controversy over the meaning of the Lord’s Supper, Crautwald had a vision during which he came to what would be the distinctive Schwenckfeldian understanding of the Supper.

Together with Schwenckfeld he worked assiduously for the reformation in Liegnitz and after the latter’s self-exile in 1529, in spite of his increasing isolation in his own country, he wrote and studied in defense of the Schwenckfeldian cause until his death in 1545.

THE EXACT DATES of Reissner’s life are unknown. He was born sometime between 1496 and 1500 in Mindelheim in south Germany and died after 1576, but before 1582. He attended the University of Ingolstadt as a young man and there studied Hebrew and Greek under the famous Johann Reuchlin. For some years he was at Wittenberg.
In 1531 he met Schwenckfeld in Strasbourg and became a loyal follower. In spite of this he was able to maintain his position as municipal clerk in his Catholic home-town until 1548. From then until his death he dedicated himself to the Schwenckfeldian movement, serving as secretary to Schwenckfeld and aiding in the publication of his works as well as writing books of his own.

A SILESIAN PASTOR and pro-Schwenckfeldian, Hiller produced sermons with a strong mystical bent. These sermons were among the most copied works next to those of Schwenckfeld himself among later Schwenckfelders. Hiller died in the late 1550s.

AN EARLY DEFENDER ...