Johann Major (1564–1654): Professor der Theologie, Superintendent in Jena und Kirchenpolitker im Dreißigjährigen Krieg ed. by Katharina Bracht (review)

There are superstars of church history, and there are supporting cast members. Johann Major (1564–1654) was one of the latter, overshadowed in fame by his younger colleague Johann Gerhard (1582–1637). In 2016 a conference at Jena focused on Major for his roles as professor of theology, church superintendent, and political advisor. In his time, Major was significant, and thus should not be forgotten.

Andreas Lesser sets forth the most comprehensive biography of Major to date, based in large part on archival materials. The details of his life provide context for university and church life in Jena in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Much of Major's theological writing consisted of funeral sermons, delivered as church superintendent of Jena. He lectured continuously on Acts for fifteen semesters. One of his sons, Johann Tobias Major (1614–1655), went on to be a theologian at Jena after him.

Marcus Stiebing examines Major's role as a political advisor. In 1618, the estates of Bohemia (mostly Protestant) rebelled against their Roman Catholic Habsburg king, Ferdinand II (1578–1637). In his place they elected Frederick V of the Palatinate (1596–1632), a Calvinist. These events sparked the Thirty Years War. In 1620, the theologians of Jena, especially Johann Gerhard and Johann Major, were asked to advise the Dukes of Saxony. Major counseled neutrality.

Tommy Drexel gives a description of an oft-reprinted sermon preached by Major after a flood in 1613. Major's theological approach to catastrophe in this "weather sermon" was to comfort those who suffered and to call people to repentance. Drexel notes the state of scholarship on seventeenth-century Lutheran preaching, but he fails to situate his findings in that scholarship. This reviewer notes that this sermon challenges the view of Lutheran Orthodox preaching as overly didactic, polemical, and unedifying. It supports newer research that has discovered that the formal nature of this preaching served the goal of edification.

Continuing the focus on Major's sermons, Katharina Bracht examines Major's citations of the early church fathers in his funeral sermons. She first describes the literature of funeral sermons, to which Major contributed at least thirty-three examples. (We have only eleven from Johann Gerhard.) Major usually cited the fathers two or three times in a funeral sermon—sometimes not at all. Bernard of Clairvaux and Martin Luther appear as church fathers alongside the ancients. Major cited the fathers for various reasons: to set forth an argument, as an authority supporting his own arguments, or just to demonstrate his erudition. Questions arise here. Bracht assumes Major was using editions of the fathers directly as he wrote his sermons, and she considers which editions he might have used (133–35). But due to the widespread use of loci communes notebooks, in which scholars would write out excerpts from their reading for future use, it is probable that Major already had a plethora of quotations in his own notebooks categorized by topic, just waiting to be used in funeral sermons.

Babett Forster and Karen Schaelow-Weber round out the volume with art-historical essays on portraits of Major. Of special interest is the description of the dress of Major and other Lutheran clergymen. They always wore a buttoned-up black vest under a long black coat; either a "millstone" ruff collar or broad collar tabs (Beffchen); often with a biretta on the head or in the hand; usually holding a Bible. For services, clergymen were depicted with a sleeveless surplice covering their outfit. This attire quickly became a Lutheran clergyman's normal dress.

One lacuna mars this otherwise excellent volume: the failure fully to engage Johann Major's theology. No one examined his Latin works, which (according to www.vd17.de) consist of numerous disputations, orations, and poems, and a few...