EISENGREIN, MARTIN AND WILHELM

Uncle and nephew. Martin, theologian and preacher;b. Stuttgart, Dec. 28, 1535; d. Ingolstadt, May 4, 1578. His father, burgomaster of Stuttgart, favored reform ideas and Martin was raised a Protestant. At the University of Vienna where he was a student and later professor of natural philosophy, he abandoned Lutheranism for Catholicism about 1558. In 1560 he was ordained and two years later returned to Ingolstadt as pastor of the university church. Martin, the friend and collaborator of Peter Canisius and Friedrich Staphylus, was repeatedly honored by Pius V, and played a major role in the Catholic Restoration in Bavaria. Duke Albert V sent him on several important missions. From 1563 to 1564 he participated in the deliberations on communion under both species and clerical celibacy held in Vienna. Though Martin held a succession of academic and administrative posts at the University of Ingolstadt, it was in the ministry, especially as a preacher, that he made his reputation. His sermons, discourses on the most debated issues of the day, were published and circulated throughout Germany. He was preacher at the court of Maximilian II from 1568 to 1569.

Wilhelm, church historian; b. Speyer, 1534; d. Rome, 1584. He was a nephew of Martin and is best known for his refutation of Flacius' Centuries of Magdeburg. The first two volumes of a projected 16-volume work appeared in 1566 (Ingolstadt) and 1568 (Munich). A later work has the same theme, Harmonia ecclesiae historica adversus centurias Magdeburg (Speyer 1576).

Bibliography: l. pfleger, "Wilhelm Eisengrein, ein Gegner des Flacius Illyrikus," Historisches Jahrbuch des Görres–Gesellschaft 25 (1904) 774–792. v. conzemius, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. a. baudrillat et al. (Paris 1912–), 15:102–105.

[b. l. marthaler]