Flacius, Matthias Illyricus

(1520–75)

   Theologian.

   Flacius was born in Croatia. In his youth he wanted to become a monk, but his uncle, who had Protestant leanings, tried to dissuade him from this by sending him to study at the Protestant universities of Basle, Tübingen and Wittenberg. As a result of contact with Philip melanchthon and Martin luther, he was converted to an evangelical form of Christianity and became Professor of Hebrew at Wittenberg. However he fell out with Melanchthon over the provisional doctrinal formula known as The Augsburg Interim, which he strongly opposed. Subsequently he taught at Jena University (where again he aroused strong criticism), and after some time in Ratisbon, he died in Frankfurt. He was the author of Clavis Scripturae Sacrae, a key to the Scriptures, and he was one of the leading contributors to the Magdeburg Centuries, an influential and intensely anti-papal interpretation of Church history. He also published the Missa Illyrica, an eleventh-century order for the service of the Mass.

   A.E. McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction (1988).