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JOHANN RUCHRAT VON WESEL (d. 1481)

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Originally appearing in Volume V28, Page 526 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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JOHANN RUCHRAT VON

WESEL (d. 1481)  , German theologian, was born at Oberwesel early in the 15th century . He appears to have been one of the leaders of the humanist
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movement in Germany, and to have had some intercourse and sympathy with the leaders of the
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Hussites in Bohemia .
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Erfurt was in his day the headquarters of a humanism which was both devout and opposed to the realist metaphysic and the Thomist
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theology which prevailed in the
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universities of Cologne and
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Heidelberg . Wesel was one of the professors at Erfurt between 1445 and 1456, and was
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vice-rector in 1458 . In 146o he was appointed preacher at Mainz, in 1462 at
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Worms, and in 1479, when an old and worn-out man, he was brought before the Dominican inquisitor Gerhard Elten of Cologne . The charges brought against him took a theological turn, though they were probably prompted by dislike of his philosophical views . They were chiefly based on a
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treatise, De indulgentiis, which he had composed while at Erfurt twenty-five years before . He had also written De potestate ecclesiastica . He died under sentence of imprisonment for
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life in the Augustinian convent in Mainz in 148r . It is somewhat difficult to determine the exact theological position of Wesel . Ullmann claims him as a " reformer before the Reformation," but, while he mastered the formal principle of Protestantism, that scripture is the
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sole
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rule of faith, it is more than doubtful that he had that experimental view of the doctrines of grace which
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lay at the basis of Reformation theology . He held that Christ is men's righteousness in so far as they are guided by the
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Holy Ghost, and the love towards
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God is
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shed abroad in their
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hearts, which clearly shows that he held the
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medieval idea that
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justification is an habitual grace implanted in men by the gracious at of God .

He seems, however, to have protested against certain medieval ecclesiastical ideas which he held to be excrescences erroneously grafted on

Christian faith and practice . He objected to the whole
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system of indulgences; he denied the infallibility of the church, on the ground. that the church contains within it sinners as well as saints; he insisted that papal authority could be upheld only when the pope remained true to the evangel; and he held that a sharp distinction ought to be
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drawn between ecclesiastical sentences and punishments, and the judgments of God . The best account of Wesel is to be found in K . Ullmann's Reformers before the Reformation . His tract on Indulgences is published in Watch's Monumenta Medii Aevi, vol. i., while a report of his trial is given in Ortuin C:ratius's Fasciculus rerum expetendarumn et fugiendarum (ed. by Browne,
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London, 1690), and d'Argentre's Collectio judiciorum de novis erroribus (Paris, 1728) . See also
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Otto Clemen's
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art. in Herzog-Hauck's Realencyklopadie
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file prat . Theologie and Kirche (3rd ed.,
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Leipzig, 1908), xxi . 127 .

End of Article: JOHANN RUCHRAT VON WESEL (d. 1481)
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