16 Facts About Matthias Flacius

Matthias Flacius Illyricus or Francovich was a Lutheran reformer from Istria, present-day Croatia.

Matthias Flacius was notable as a theologian, sometimes dissenting strongly with his fellow Lutherans, and as a scholar for his editorial work on the Magdeburg Centuries.

Matthias Flacius's family was related by marriage to the local Lupetino family: Jacobea's brother, Luciano Luciani, married Ivanka Lupetina, the sister of the friar Baldo Lupetino, likewise born in Labin, who later was condemned to death in Venice for his Lutheran sympathies.

Matthias Flacius matriculated at the University of Basel in 1539 under the name Mattheus de Francistis [Frankovic] de Albona.

At the age of sixteen, Matthias Flacius went to study in Venice, where he was taught by the humanist Giambattista Cipelli.

Matthias Flacius's intention was diverted by his uncle-in-law, Baldo Lupetina, provincial of the Franciscans and sympathetic to the Reformation cause, who convinced him to start a university career.

Matthias Flacius continued his studies in Basel in 1539, then went to Tubingen and finally ended up in Wittenberg, where in he was welcomed by Philip Melanchthon.

In 1544, Matthias Flacius was appointed professor of Hebrew at Wittenberg.

Soon, Matthias Flacius was prominent in the theological discussions of the time, strenuously opposing the Augsburg Interim, and the compromise of Melanchthon known as the Leipzig Interim.

Matthias Flacius remained at the university between 1557 and 1562.

Matthias Flacius proceeded to Strasbourg where he was well received by the superintendent Johannes Marbach.

Matthias Flacius represents in some sense a move in the direction of the scientific study of church history in the modern sense and similarly of hermeneutics, though no doubt his impelling motive was not dispassionate but polemical, namely to prove the false premises of Roman Catholicism.

Matthias Flacius based these claims on the fact that there used to be a notorious Istro-Romanian presence in Labin during the times in which Flacius lived, in the surname of his father and other arguments.

In 1545, while at Wittenberg, Matthias Flacius married a pastor's daughter.

Matthias Flacius had twelve children with his first wife before she died in 1564.

Matthias Flacius remarried the same year in Regensburg and had six more children with his second wife.