Kaspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig

Kaspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig (born 1489, Ossig, Lower Silesia [Germany]—died Dec. 10, 1561, Ulm [Germany]) was a German theologian, writer, and preacher who led the Protestant Reformation in Silesia. He was a representative of a phenomenon called Reformation by the Middle Way, and he established societies that survive in the United States as the Schwenckfelder Church.

Born into the nobility, Schwenckfeld grew up on the family estate and studied at the universities of Cologne and Frankfurt. In 1518, while serving as a counselor to various courts (1511–23), he experienced a spiritual awakening. Seven years later he visited Martin Luther in Wittenberg to submit his views on the Eucharist. Their meeting ended in disagreement, however, and Schwenckfeld returned to Silesia to further develop his theology and his plan for reformation. His approach, designated the Middle Way, sought to establish a course between Roman Catholic and Lutheran doctrines, both of which he claimed were diverting attention from Christ to external religious symbols. After his publication of strongly anti-Catholic and anti-Lutheran views resulted in his dismissal by the Duke of Liegnitz, Schwenckfeld went (1529) to Strassburg, where he met Sebastian Franck, Melchior Hofmann, and Michael Servetus and the Swiss physician Paracelsus and the Swiss Reformer Huldrych Zwingli, who had published Schwenckfeld’s work on the sacraments. Because he was unable to reconcile his differences with Zwingli, Schwenckfeld was not invited to participate in 1529 in the Colloquy of Marburg, where his views on the Eucharist were dismissed by the debaters.

Schwenckfeld’s defense of his doctrines and the principles of religious liberty against the German Reformer Martin Bucer at a synod in Strassburg (1533) did not persuade the leaders of orthodox groups to relax their control over the synod. Unwelcome in the city, Schwenckfeld left, eventually settling in Ulm, from which he was expelled in 1539 by Lutherans angered by his emphasis on the deification of Christ’s humanity. The next year he published a more detailed refutation of the attacks on his doctrine entitled Grosse Confession (“Great Confession”). This work stressed differences between Lutherans and Zwinglians regarding the Eucharist at a time when efforts were being made to reconcile them. An anathema was accordingly issued against him by the Schmalkald League, a defensive organization of Protestant princes; his books were prohibited in Protestant territories; and he became a religious fugitive. His followers, meanwhile, divorced themselves from orthodox church circles and formed small societies and brotherhoods. Throughout the rest of his life he remained in hiding, frequently changing his home, writing under a variety of pseudonyms, and answering his critics with a constant flow of pamphlets and books. The brotherhoods remained active in southern Germany after Schwenckfeld’s death, but their vitality was virtually destroyed during the Thirty Years’ War.