Johann Maier von Eck (13 November 1486 – 13 February 1543), often anglicized as John Eck, was a German Catholic theologian, scholastic, prelate, and a pioneer of the counter-reformation who was among Martin Luther's most important interlocutors and theological opponents.
Life
Johann Eck was born Johann Maier at Eck (later Egg, near Memmingen, Swabia) and derived his additional surname from his birthplace, which he himself, after 1523, always modified into Eckius or Eccius, i.e. "of Eck". His father, Michael Maier, was a peasant and bailiff, or Amtmann, of the village. The boy's education was undertaken by his uncle, Martin Maier, parish priest at Rottenburg on the river Neckar.
At the age of 12 he entered the University of Heidelberg, which he left in the following year for Tübingen. After taking his master's degree in 1501, he began the study of theology under Johann Jakob Lempp, and studied the elements of Hebrew and political economy with Konrad Summenhart.
He left Tübingen in 1501 on account of the plague and after a year at Cologne finally settled at Freiburg University, at first as a student of theology and law and later as a successful teacher where he was mentor to the prominent Anabaptist leader of Waldshut and Nikolsburg, Balthasar Hubmaier, and later retaining this relationship during their move to the University of Ingolstadt. In 1508 he entered the priesthood in Strasbourg and two years later obtained his doctorate in theology.
At Freiburg in 1506 he published his first work, Ludicra logices exercitamenta and also proved himself a brilliant and subtle orator, although obsessed by an untamable controversial spirit and unrestrained powers of invective. At odds with his colleagues, he was glad to accept a call to a theological chair at Ingolstadt in November 1510, receiving at the same time the honors and income of a canon at Eichstadt. In 1512 he became prochancellor at the university and made the institution a bulwark of Catholicism. His wide knowledge found expression in numerous writings. In the theological field he produced his Chrysopassus (Augsburg, 1514), in which he developed a theory of predestination, while he obtained some fame as commentator on the Summulae of Peter of Spain and on Aristotle's De caelo and De anima.
As a political economist he defended the lawfulness of putting out capital at interest and successfully argued his view at disputations at Augsburg (1514) and Bologna (1515), where he also disputed about predestination. These triumphs were repeated at Vienna in 1516. Through these successes he gained the patronage of the Fuggers, but they scandalized Martin Luther.
A ducal commission, appointed to find a way of ending the interminable strife between rival academic parties, asked Eck to prepare fresh commentaries on Aristotle and Peter of Spain. Between 1516 and 1520, in addition to all his other duties, he published commentaries on the Summulae of Petrus Hispanus, and on the Dialectics, Physics and lesser scientific works of Aristotle, which became the textbooks of the university. During these early years, Eck was considered a modern theologian, and his commentaries are inspired with much of the scientific spirit of the New Learning. His aim, however, had been to find a via media between old and new.
He championed the cause of the papacy. The result of this new resolve were his chief work, De primatu Petri (1519), and his Enchiridion locorum communium adversus Lutherum ran through 46 editions between 1525 and 1576. From 1530 to 1535 he published a collection of his writings against Luther, Opera contra Ludderum, in 4 vols. He verbally assailed his friend, humanist and jurist Ulrich Zasius, for a doctrine proclaimed ten years before, and Erasmus's Annotationes in Novum Testamentum. Eck died at Ingolstadt on 10 February 1543.
Disputations with Luther and Karlstadt
As early as the spring of 1517 Eck had entered into friendly relations with Martin Luther, who had regarded him as in harmony with his own views, but this relationship was short-lived. In his Obelisci, Eck attacked Luther's theses, which had been sent to him by Christoph von Scheurl, and accused him of promoting the "heresy of the Bohemian Brethren", fostering anarchy within the Church and branded him a Hussite. Luther replied in his Asterisci adversus obeliscos Eccii, while Andreas Karlstadt defended Luther's views of indulgences and engaged in a violent controversy with Eck.