By grammar alone?

Wilhelm Dilthey once admitted that Matthias Flacius Illyricus either appropriated the fourth book of Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana in detail or took advantage of all of the early Christian exegesis in general in his Clavis Sacrae Scripturae. The aim of this paper is partly polemical. While Flacius himself frequently proved Dilthey’s unfavorable judgment to be correct, he also followed the innovatory footsteps of biblical philologists such as Gianozzo Manetti, Lorenzo Valla and Desiderius Erasmus in order to reaffirm and concretize the Lutheran principle of the intelligibility of Scripture based on its strictly immanent, that is to say grammatical, investigation. Consequently, I would like to discuss the Clavis Sacrae Scripturae as the confessional yet deliberate outcome of the grammatical and rhetorical curriculum of studia humanitatis. All of this, however, will not lead to the conclusion that the Clavis should still remain the enterprise of a less distinguished follower. For decisions made by Flacius regarding the tradition of patristic, medieval, and humanistic exegesis was constantly founded upon the heuristically critical and genuinely hermeneutical principle. Therefore, it is worth asking what this principle was, or more precisely, how can man use philological tools that do not deprive God of his unconditioned sovereignty

Imago diaboli? Luther’s Anthropological Holism

The Flacian controversy in mid-16th century Lutheranism turned on the question whether as a consequence of original sin the image of God in humankind has been lost and replaced by the image of the devil. Is the fallen human being evil per se? Examining Martin Luther’s comments on the story of creation and fall in his Genesis Lectures (1535-1545), I argue that Luther’s insistence on the loss of the imago dei results in an anthropology closer to that of Thomas Aquinas than to Luther’s uncompromising disciple, Matthias Flacius Illyricus. For both Thomas and Luther, original sin is a holistic term that reflects the absence of original righteousness in the essence of the soul. Luther rejects any substantial reading of original sin that would ontologize it as the very substance of the human being. His anthropological holism means that sin has a deleterious effect on the whole human being, including all the powers of body and soul. Sin is privative, a spiritual leprosy that corrupts the whole human being.

CROATIAN HUMANIST MATIJA VLAČIĆ AND HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THE SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT OF THE EARLY MODERN AGE

Background: The 500th Anniversary of the Reformation has caused the emergence of many new publications in Ukraine dedicated to this phenomenon. Biographical research were taken quite modest positions among them. The focus was on the figures of the Western European Reformation, whose biographies are widely represented in world historiography. However, many Slavonic reformers still undervalued. In particular, a little known in Ukrainian studies remains a Croatian humanist of the 16th century Matija Vlačić (Matthias Flacius Illyricus). Purpose: The author put forward the task to acquaint the Ukrainian reader with the biography and creativity of the Croatian thinker, as well as to reveal his role in church processes, the development of theological and scientific knowledge in Early Modern Europe. To achieve this, the article is divided into several thematic blocks. The first covers the main pages of life and activity of Matija Vlačić as a Lutheran theologian, polemicist, enlightener, and scholar, the second – summarizes the early and modern studies devoted to Vlačić. The following two thematic blocks relate to his scholarly heritage in the fields of Biblical exegesis and hermeneutics (based on his “Clavis Scripturae”), сhurch history, and critical study of sources (based on “Catalogus testium Veritatis” and role of Vlačić in the creation of “Ecclesiastica Historia” – “Magdeburg Centuries”). Results: The author pays tribute to the scientific achievements of many scholars who have done important work in the study of personality of Matija, and supports the opinion expressed in contemporary historiography of his role in protection of Martin Luther’s reform. The article confirms significant of Vlačić contribution to the development of new principles of exegetics and its rise on the level of Biblical studies, and to the laying down the foundations of scientific hermeneutics and textology. The author traced use by Matija Vlačić his methods of exegetics in the study of historical documents and the comprehension of church history. An attempt at such use is his historical work “Catalogus testium Veritatis”, which can be regarded as an early experience which found a more serious incarnation in “Magdeburg Centuries”. Despite the obvious for the 16th century scientific achievements of “Catalogus” and “Centuries” polemical and ideological tendentiousness of their authors made church-historical science an element of confessional confrontation in Post-Reformation Europe. Scientific methods of Vlačić were used by Andrzej Węgierski – theologian and historian in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the author of the chronicle “Slavonic Reformation”, which became factual material for the historical works of many scholars of Eastern Europe. Key words: Reformation, Croatia, Matija Vlačić (Matthias Flacius Illyricus), exegetics, hermeneutics, сhurch history, “Clavis Scripturae”, “Catalogustestium Veritatis”, “Magdeburg Centuries”.