Johannes a Lasco in Ostfriesland

This new biography follows the activities of Polish nobleman, humanist, Reformer and theologian Johannes a Lasco (Jan Laski,1499-1560) in East Friesland. The reformer's career spanned humanism and the Reformation in Poland, Italy, Switzerland and Germany. Jürgens begins his analysis with a Lasco's education, his diplomatic and ecclesiastical activities in Hungary and Poland, his humanist sympathies in Basel and Poland and his turn towards the Reformation. Attention focuses on contacts to Erasmus of Rotterdam, whose library a Lasco purchased, as well as his participation in the Hungarian succession conflict and his encounters with Melanchthon and Albert Hardenberg. A Lasco's efforts to define the East Frisian Reformed Church against Anabaptists and Catholics and to unify its organization and theology are examined. His negotiations between the developing confessions are analyzed theologically and politically from his energetic correspondence with leading contemporary theologians, organized for the first time here in an appendix. The book concludes with the Interim and a Lasco's 1549 dismissal as East Frisian Superintendent.