Bonnus, Hermannus

BONNUS, HERMANNUS (Hermann Gude?): German Reformer; b. at Quackenbrück, in Osnabrück, 1504; d. at Lübeck Feb. 12, 1548. He was educated apparently first at Münster, then in Bugenhagen's school at Treptow, but certainly entered the University of Wittenberg in 1523, coming under the influence of Luther and Melanchthon. In 1525, probably, he migrated to Greifswald, and about two years later went to Gottorp to act as tutor to the six-year-old son of Frederick I of Denmark. Thence he was called to Lübeck in 1530, and (on Bugenhagen's organization of the Evangelical Church there) made superintendent in the following February. Here he remained until his death, in spite of calls to Hamburg in 1532 and to Lüneburg in 1534. He represented his town in the conference of the six free cities of Lübeck, Bremen, Hamburg, Rostock, Stralsund, and Lüneburg, held at Hamburg in 1535 to concert measures for dealing with Papists, Anabaptists, and Sacramentarians. In 1543 he visited Osnabrück to take part in the establishment of a Reformed system and liturgy which received the approval of the bishop, Franz von Waldeck, and was later extended to the whole diocese. The attempt to carry it into that of Münster was forcibly resisted by the chapter, but met with partial success in the country districts. His influence was extended by his Low German catechism (1539) and by his services to the hymnody of this dialect. He certainly edited and revised several collections of both German and Latin hymns, and probably contributed some of his own. He took a courageous part against the democratic revolution in Lübeck under Wullenweber, and in his Chronika der kaiserlichen Stadt Lübeck (1539) pointed out the dangers of innovating tendencies. After the formal adoption of the Augsburg Confession in 1535, he contended successfully against the efforts of the Roman Catholic party to regain control and against the propaganda of the Anabaptists. His office required him to expound the Scriptures, and his discourses on the Acts and on the liturgical epistles for the Sundays were published. In accordance with the Hamburg decisions, which had required preachers to dwell upon the examples of the saints, he published in 1539 a compilation of hagiographical 231extracts. The king of Denmark tried to secure him for an important office (probably the bishopric of Sleswick), but he refused to leave Lübeck, where his body was deposited amid universal mourning in St. Mary's church.

(G. Kawerau.)

Bibliography: A. Spiegel, Hermann Bonnus, Göttingen, 1892; G. Bossert, in TLZ, 1892, pp. 260 sqq.