J. studied at Rostock, Köln, and Bologna, but he took his doctorate at Greifswald. He was an early convert to Lutheranism and as a result taught in a number of different places, ultimately settling in Marburg. He worked on developing a genuinely Protestant law and distanced himself from those parts of the ius commune that were specifically Catholic, among them marriage law and the law of the relationship between church and state. He wrote widely, however, and a number of his works appear in Tractatus 1549. Their absence in TUI 1584 is noticeable, as is the fact that his De executoribus (TUI 1584 t. 8.1) is attributed simply to ‘Joannes iureconsultus clarissimus’. The work was printed in Köln in 1541, at 90–118, together with his Collatio iuris ciuilis et canonci. The Protestant tilt of the latter is fairly obvious; that of the former is not. We have not seen what seems to be the first edition, Frankfurt 1520, which is held only by the university library at Rostock, but if the date is to be believed it was written before J. became seriously involved with Protestantism.

Source: K. Luig, in *NDB.

Entry by: CD/DC v.2017

TUI database