Campanus, Johannes

CAMPANUS, cam-pɑ̄´nUs, JOHANNES: Reformer; b. at Mæseyck (17 m. n.e. of Mæstricht) in Belgium; d. at Jülich (Juliers, 15 m. n.e, of Aachen) c. 1575. He studied at Cologne, whence he was expelled in 1520 for opposing the scholastic doctors; went to Jülich and was noted for his vehement Lutheranism; went to Wittenberg in 1527; was present at the Conference of Marburg in 1529, and surprised both sides by his presentation of the view that the bread is indeed bread and at the same time the body of Christ because he makes it so. He was not, however, allowed to take part in the debate. This snub and others incurred by his tendency to unorthodox views turned him against the Reformers and them against him. He was called insane because he would not yield to their arguments. So he was repeatedly imprisoned and died a prisoner. In 1530 he prepared a book in Latin and German "Against All the World Since the Apostles" and circulated it in manuscript—no complete or printed copy is known to east, but extracts have been preserved in a manuscript by Bugenhagen (cf. ZHT, 1846, pp. 495 sqq. ). In 1532 one of his followers, Franz von Streitten, published a popular restatement of his views which he dedicated to King Frederick of Denmark. He taught that the Holy Spirit was not the Third Person but the common essence of the two, while the Son was not coeternal with the Father but, created out of his essence, before all creatures. He was likewise an Anabaptist and in general a radical.

(A. Hegler†) K. Holl.

Bibliography: F. S. Bock, Historia antitrinitariorum, ii. 244 sqq., Leipsic, 1784; G. J. Dlabacz, Biographie des J. Campanus mit einem Verzeichnisse seiner . . . Schriften, Prague. 1804; K. Rembert, Die "Wiedertäufer" im Jülich, Berlin, 1899; J. Köstlin, Martin Luther, vol. ii. passim, Berlin, 1903.