AGRICOLA (originally

See also:

• SCHNEIDER, JOHANN GOTTLOB (1750-1822)
• SCHNEIDER, LOUIS (1805-1878)

SCHNEIDER, then SCHNITTER), JOHANNES (1494-1566)  , German Protestant reformer, was born on the loth of April 1494, at Eisleben, whence he is sometimes called Magister Islebius . He studied at Wittenberg, where he soon gained the friendship of Luther . In 1519 he accompanied Luther to the great assembly of German divines at Leipzig, and acted as recording secretary . After teaching for some time in Wittenberg, he went to Frankfort in 1525 to establish the re-formed mode of worship . He had resided there only a month when he was called to Eisleben, where he remained till 1526 as teacher in the school of St Andrew, and preacher in the Nicolai church . In 1536 he was recalled to teach in Wittenberg, and was welcomed by Luther . Almost immediately, however, a controversy, which had been begun ten years before and been temporarily silenced, broke out more violently than ever: Agricola was the first to teach the views which Luther was the first to stigmatize by the now well-known name Antinomian (q.v.), maintaining that while the unregenerate were still under the Mosaic law, Christians were entirely free from it, being under the gospel alone . In consequence of the bitter controversy with Luther that resulted, Agricola in 1540 left Wittenberg secretly for Berlin, where he published a letter addressed to the elector of Saxony, which was generally interpreted as a recantation of his obnoxious views . Luther, however, seems not to have so accepted it, and Agricola remained at Berlin . The elector Joachim II. of Brandenburg, having taken him into his favour, appointed him court preacher and general superintendent . He held both offices until his death in 1566, and his career in Brandenburg was one of great activity and influence . Along with Julius von Pflug, bishop of Naumburg-Zeitz, and Michael Helding, titular bishop of Sidon, he prepared the Augsburg Interim of 1548 .

He endeavoured in vain to appease the Adiaphoristic controversy (see

ADIAPHORISTS) . He died during an epidemic of plague on the 22nd of September 1566 . Agricola wrote a number of theological works which are now of little interest . He was the first to make a collection of German proverbs which he illustrated with a commentary . The most complete edition, which contains seven hundred and fifty pro- verbs, is that published at Wittenberg in 1592; a modern one is that of Latendorf, 1862 . See Cordes, Joh . Agricola's Schriften moglichst verzeichnet (Altona, 1817); Life by G . Kawerau (1881), who also wrote the notice in Hauck-Herzog, Realencyk. fur prot . Theol., where other literature is cited .